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True, and this was why laws and regulations were implemented (and enforced) on big business, the financial industry and the rich from FDR until Reagan. Reagan then began the deregulation frenzy that is bankrupting America.
It's not possible to have a legitimate discussion about the economy and our prospects of economic recovery/survival as long as we ignore poverty. Not everyone can work, due to health or circumstances, and there aren't jobs for all who need one right now. We know from our own history that refusing to spend $.01 of the people's money on the people's survival today will inevitably cost $1.00 or more in the future. Those who live more comfortable lives can't grasp that it's not possible for millions of workers, on today's low wages, to save enough money to tide them over following a layoff. They are a single job loss from losing everything, with no way back up. Families are torn apart, futures are wiped out -- a high price to pay for a damaged economy. Those who are left destitute don't disappear. From the costs of foster care placement to health care costs to the costs of routinely cycling the homeless through jails, our socioeconomic policies take a heavy toll on the budget. It's great to talk about job creation -- been doing just that for decades. But until then, one way or another, we are going to have to face the high cost of ignoring American poverty.
Marc says raising taxes on high income earners is the ticket; otherwise "...everyone who earns money from Capitol Gains is going to pay, big; and some of them are very low income earners. We need to stay on the same page about this, my friends." Count me in, Marc! I agree 100%. - AIW
Competitive society works thus. The richest people are the most unethical because being unethical gives them an advantage. It doesn't take long for most people in business to figure that out so pretty soon there are no ethics in business or even society in general.
The rich got rich by stealing the product of someone else's labor. Ever since the domestication of plants and animals that's been the case, or rather, ever since the principle of domestication got applied to other people.
Kend does raise an interesting point. Raising Capital Gains taxes alone does little to solve the BIG problem. We need to raise taxes on high income earners. Screw Capital Gains. High income is where the focus needs to be regardless of how that income is earned.
Otherwise, everyone who earns money from Capital gains is going to pay, big; and, some of them are very low income earners. We need to stay on the same page about this, my friends.
That is very believable, Chuck. But I still think Palin makes a great point; one that has occurred to me as well. Whoever pays into any candidate's campaign should give more than a clue how that candidate would legislate, once in office. - AIW
Kend -- When you say taxed, do you mean tax rate or the amount of taxes? Do you think the guy with 20e9 invested should have a higher tax rate than the guy with 20e3 invested?
Kend, you're babbling incoherently. Don't panic! You'll be fine, you just won't have more than your fair share.
chuck. I just think if when it comes to taxing capital gains The guy with $20,000 invested should not be taxed the same as a guy with $20,000,000,000.
What fact isn't true?
Yes history I would but that is the first time I think I have ever seen the word grammatical. I guess I should of stayed in school. Which one of my facts is not true?
Frankly if we are going to start bolstering our arguments with stories of charitable donations to religious organizations perhaps we should refer to scripture regarding capitalistic practices, money changers, and rich men crawling through eyes of needles. There are some pretty sweet deals that come with charitable giving not to mention turning a blind eye. I'm pretty tired of the elite always trumpeting the S word or Marxism to divert attention away from other words like scam, ripp off, and elite entitlement.
If we as a democratic society are truely conservative financially then we should worship an honest and level playing feild of economics and not try to poisen the idea with misleading titles or suggestions of socialism. A level economic playing feild with rational and just rules and regulations is not scialism. Its fair play. Ofcourse some folks will be subject to good and sometime unusual fortune, but not every friggin day by the same relatives, buddies, and cronies. C'mon !
If you take the BLS Consumer Expenditure table including incomes, and extract the necessities (sums) for life, Food, Clothing, Shelter, Transportation (workers have to get to their work location), Medical and Education and subtract the sum of each of these for the median incomes of the tabled income classes, you find that those earning less than $20,000 per year, have a negative flow of incomes. This does not include any extra,m beyond Social Security for Pension or to carry them when not working. The proportion of incomes for the upper income classes for the necessities drops from almost 200% for those under $5,000 per year to about 9% or less for those having incomes over $150,000 per year. Unfortunately the BLS Consumer Expenditure tables do not give larger incomes but classify the largest income group as "Greater than $150,000. To get the information for incomesover $50,000 you have to extract from the BLS table for higher incomes.
kend -- I am having a hard time determing how promoting a progressive tax structure shows the people with money are evil.
Kend -- If you used facts, reasoning or even read what Thom said this blog would be boring.
Why not just continue the New Deal and the Great Scoiety? In other words, roll back reaganomics.
Romney recieved twice as much as Obama (Time magazine in 2012).
Frankly, Kend, you'd be a great deal more credible if you used standard, grammatical English--not to mention facts and reasoning.
Kend: I don't dispute that there are a lot of, perhaps, medium rich people that are merchants or other business people who have made some pretty good money by taking certain chances and/or made good business decisions. But I think that there are many, many more who would not think twice about scamming people out of their money.
Bernie Madoff was just the tip of the iceberg. And he is exceptional because of the massive pyramid scheme he created and because he actually turned himself in and actually went to jail. There are many, many others like Madoff, or even bigger scammers who have not yet been caught, or if they have, they were not prosecuted.
And I was reading the Forbes Fortune 500 the other day where they had photos and short bios, along with the net worth, of richest people in the US. They all seem to be decent people and have even given to various charities. There are only a few who have given away much of their wealth to worth causes. But even Savings and Loans scandal swindler Charles Keating gave $1.25 million of stolen money to Mother Theresa. He donated $100,000 to the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and more that $1 million to Covenant House and lots of other donations. What a sweet heart, eh? But, at one time his Lincoln Savings and Loan assets climbed to $5.5 billion. What is a puny one or million dollars compared to his net worth? That would be almost comparable to someone of the working class giving one dollar to charity and expecting to be revered as a great, magnanimous person. And so many of these very wealthy people, while cheating many people out of their money, one way or another, and paying way less than most working people, expect to be praised as generous beings. When you steal a lot of money..you can afford to give a little in return...and that's all they are giving...just a little. It buys them kudos in their society pages.
But, you know, these people live in "glass houses" and vast fortunes could be sunk in an instance if someone were to find these fiber optics cables and blast them to bits. When these high-frequency traders, using high speed computers, transmit millions of buy/sell orders in fractions of a second in order to beat every other normal trader, they would be very vulnerable to any delay. Even a rogue software that caused problems for about 45 minutes before they found the problem at Knight Capitol in New Jersey nearly destroyed them. Another 15 minutes and they would have been destroyed...completely de-capitolized and decapitated. I'm not saying it's a good idea...just that it could happen...just like that disputed pipeline could be attacked some place out in the wilderness. If you don't have the people on your side...anything could happen. And it looks like Nebraska has a lot of people that might just do something like that if the pipeline becomes operational.
Palin this is exactly what I am talking about the ones who earned there wealth by UN ethical ways of course should go to jail but they are a very few. The majority of people with wealth made it by starting a small business and growing it. The pay there employees a decent wage and give them the best benefits they can.
I have said a thousand times if you are stupid enough to invest in stocks you deserve everything you get. You are right Wall Street is just a scam for the rich to get richer. But don't punish the hard working middle class who has done well honestly for those crooks.
But Kend...they (the wealthy) robbed US of OUR wealth. How do you think the wealthy get wealthy? They get that way by screwing their employees out of decent wages yet expecting to raise prices on products they manufacture or sell. And since the US doesn't much manufacture anything anymore..the merchants sell goods manufactured in cheap labor countries. But most wealthy people have ridden the manufactured bubbles they created in their F.I.R.E. (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) pyramid schemes that makes them rich. They get that way by manipulating people to spend their money on things they can't afford, on things they don't need, or for things that continually break or become useless (planned obsolescence).
These wealthy people are not hard working or deserving of the wealth they have amassed. They are, largely, flim-flam scammers that deserve to have all their wealth confiscated. And then, we need to throw the bums into jail cells for a long, long time.
The very fact that these criminals have gotten away with their scams...in large part... is because they have propagandized to us that they are the job creators. But that is such a FARCE, especially since they have destroyed so many jobs in the US by relocating our jobs overseas. There is no good reason, no good excuse, that they deserve to have lessor taxes than everyone else in this country. They have gotten away with this long enough. We need to triple or quadruple their taxes if they are going to not hire locally.
And on top of the huge tax breaks the ruling elite have manipulated for themselves, by hiding their wealth in off shore accounts to avoid paying taxes. They have even stolen our jobs in favor of offshore sweat shops where even children are made to work long, hard and dangerous hours. They do this, in part, because they don't have safety laws and protections of their workers, or environmental laws, and they pay those workers just a fraction of what they had to pay us for our jobs. And the pollution they create in other countries doesn't always stay in those countries. They may feel the adverse affects more acutely but it eventually gets around to us as well.
Oh, and I don't think raising the taxes on pensioners is their biggest worry. Wall Street, where all their money is, is one big casino full of card sharks and rigged roulette wheels. With the unfair advantage of high frequency trading lots of people's pensions will act like they've been high vacuumed sucked dry.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/high-frequency-trading-dange...
We have a common wealth that if we shared it, each of us getting a share would be equivalent to getting a basic income. What’s our common wealth? The worth of Earth. It’s our spending for land, resources, EM spectrum, and other very valuable aspects of nature. We could use taxes or fees or dues or leases to redirect our spending for things none of us made into our public treasury and use dividends to disburse the revenue to all registered voters. In most economies, the spending for nature and privilege is likely to be half of all spending (roughly the GDP), so there is plenty of money to share, as a Citizen’s Dividen or a Basic Income. More at progress.org.
From now on, vote for the political critter that receives the least amount of campaign cash from the ruling elite. How much did Obama get? A lot more than everyone else. We should have picked up on this as a big clue as to how he would conduct his office.
If everyone of the 99% of voters did this, we wouldn't have ruling elite owned scum running this country. Vote your conviction...don't give in to the ruling elite scam of voting for the least frightening politician selected from the one party system...the DemoPublicans aka Republicrats. Those who promised they'd represent the people that voted for them..yet represented the wealthy more.... deserve to lose...no matter what the consequences. If everyone voted their conviction instead of being cowed by the crooked system we wouldn't have to worry about being screwed by them.
Socialist Kshama Sawant, Seattle City council member, is a good example! Want to change the crooked system...maybe we need Socialist Kshama Sawant for President...along with putting non-Democrats and non-Republicans into Congress.
The good old boy network of crooked politicians, and their ruling elite bosses, worry that the tables will be turned on them. That's why they have to keep people frightened and confused and voting for one of their own.
Nothing will change until we show the ruling elite that we're all going to turn this country into a hard line Socialist country. The communist scare turned this country around once..let's do it again!!!
So this is it. The democrats solution to one in six with out a job is to divide and concour. Convince the middle class that people with money are evil. They are so evil we need to rob them of there wealth. I hate to bust your bubbles but the majority of pensioners make money with money. So by raising tax on capital gains you are going to reduce the standard of living of your seniors. So instead of reducing governments rediculous spending habits like spending millions of dollars to kick a farmer off grazing land in the middle of nowhere for no reason you would rather punish seniors. Way to go Thom you it a all time low. remember the money invested is after tax money It has already been taxed once. At least make the tax rates progressive so you only tax the wealthiest seniors. There is no reason why one senior should have a better life then any other one. That who be to capitalist.