Similar points, different directions. Tnx

By the way, if they put their money in their businesses, that is, did not take it out, they paid no tax on it. So what produced all that additional tax they paid?

Yes, our economic system is broken and in need of serious reform.

The capitalism practiced today is what, for a long time, I have termed “Hoggism,” propelled by greed and the sheer love of power over others. “Hoggism” institutionalizes greed (creating concentrated capital ownership, monopolies, and special privileges). “Hoggism” is about the ability of greedy rich people to manipulate the lives of people who struggle with declining labor worker earnings and job opportunities, and then accumulate the bulk of the money through monopolized productive capital ownership. Our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital “worker” owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success––always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent are not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption. It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being.

Binary economist Louis Kelso postulated: “When consumer earning power is systematically acquired in the course of the normal operations of the economy by people who need and want more consumer goods and services, the production of goods and services should rise to unprecedented levels; the quality and craftsmanship of goods and services, freed of the cornercutting imposed by the chronic shortage of consumer purchasing power, should return to their former high levels; competition should be brisk; and the purchasing power of money should remain stable year after year.”

Without this necessary balance hopeless poverty, social alienation, and economic breakdown will persist, even though the American economy is ripe with the physical, technical, managerial, and engineering prerequisites for improving the lives of the 99 percent majority. Why? Because there is a crippling organizational malfunction that prevents making full use of the technological prowess that we have developed. The system does not fully facilitate connecting the majority of citizens, who have unsatisfied needs and wants, to the productive capital assets enabling productive efficiency and economic growth.

Kelso said, “We are a nation of industrial sharecroppers who work for somebody else and have no other source of income. If a man owns something that will produce a second income, he’ll be a better customer for the things that American industry produces. But the problem is how to get the working man [and woman] that second income.”

The "how" is answered in the Agenda of The JUST Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/, http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jtw-graphicoverview-2013.pdf and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/; Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice; and the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/.

The reason the rich paid more tax with a lower tax rate was because THEY had a much, much larger income. But it remained in their hands and did not do the trickle down that was promised. So now after all these years, voodoo economics has created billionaires and a growing poor segment of our society. Cut it any way you want, we're worse off as a society than say the scandanavian countries or how we were before Reaganomics came along, due to increasing economic inequality. I'm not much comforted by the fact that the rich are enormously richer. ---- p.s. I heard the rich are still avoiding taxes. Romney paid a lower tax rate than I did according to the one return he released. 'Course he only made $23 million that year. Don't know how he gets by with that 47% freeloading off him.

There is no medical care for mass starvation. There are no tanks, airplanes or ships that will defend from global warming. All the shiny metal, glittering gems and paper money will not buy us a solution. To save our future and humans from perish we must change our economics, social and political institutions.

Economically we must change from our fossil burning, petrol-chemical economy to the green economy. Ban the international manufacture of petrol-chemical autos. Switch to independent charged electric. Modernize water systems implementing new conservation water science technology. Declare access to water an inalienable human right. Make it a public common with resources managed on a regional basis. Enable small farms utilizing perma-culture techniques for more production.

Socially we must learn to work less, to consume less and to live more. We want a 4 day work week. 3 day alternative shift with a lving wage. Build energy and water efficient homes that single income families can buy and own. Our society was once a mighty giant for good. The solution to global warming must be our lead.

Politically we need a new economic "Bill of Rights". Term limits for supreme court justices. 3 - 6 year terms. The last requiring reconfirmation. End money is speech and chartered organizations becoming live entities with rights as you or I.

The New Democrats of Santa Cruz believe the next president must bring global warming to the very front of all issues. We call on all those who believe we must act now to join us in drafting an AL GORE-BERNIE SANDERS ticket in 2016. The two candidates who have spoken most eloquently on this issue. We need these fine people to lead us into this new century. They will defeat the BUSH-RUBIO ticket the republicans are planning. There is no one who voted for Al who would vote for Bush this time around. Al won that election and Americans are most willing to make all of that right. We need Bernie on this ticket. With a tight senate his vote could be the most important function of the executive. He is most qualified to take over as comander in chief if needed. His vision is ours.

Willie W ~ Thanks! That theory popped into my head almost instantaneously when I read about that discovered fossil of the spark plug. What other explanation is possible? Aliens left it behind? What are interstellar aliens doing with an internal combustion engine? There is only one explanation and that is very eye opening.

They say that human behavior is natural; and, therefore, predictable using the scientific method. What if ancient prophecies like the book of Revelations are actual blueprints for that natural sequence of human behavior? What if ancient myths are actually historic fact? What if the real inconvenient truth is all around us and we chose to ignore it?

There is one thing that is not natural about human behavior. We have the ability to determine the outcome of our decisions. We have the ability to make free choices that change those outcomes. Perhaps, if this theory is true, we will make different decisions eventually that will end this causality loop and propel us beyond what human nature alone has trapped us into.

AIW -- I agree with you. I am just warning we need to be vigilant. As a matter of fact I have noticed since Obama has been in office medicare seems to be much more cost conscious. I am basing this on a sample on one, me.

A third of a century ago the American people were sold the idea that in changing our laws to favor the rich we would all benefit by a trickle down effect. As Thom's note above indicates, the second part of that deal never happened. We are, however, left with the laws enacted to profit the wealthy while taking from the middle class and poor. Now the concentration of wealth has given the wealthy the ability to prevent a reversal of our problematic economic system. And they can do it with their pocket change. When a full time job frequently does not provide enough to buy food and a roof over one's head we are truely returning to a serf society. Only this time the master/Lord is a corporation, totally divorced from concern for the common good. A better recipe for a system collapse I cannot imagine.

A century ago the US population had a much more progressive/populist impulse than now. There were great strides made toward economic equality in terms of tax policy. The idea of taxing the wealthiest at confiscatory rates is seen now as heresy.

Marc, I clicked on that link and participated in Bernie's poll. The results were pretty amazing. It appears more people are waking up and realizing that "socialized medicine" is a pretty good idea after all. At the rate of nearly 50,000 avoidable deaths in this country each year, casualties of our uniquely American pay-or-die system and all its barriers to care, it seems inevitable the ripple effect from that would keep expanding as more and more of us lose friends or family members to avoidable and treatable causes, sacrificed at the alter of Big Money. - AIW

DAnneMarc -- As mentioned several times before I want something better than medicare. A couple of possibities are described in Dylan Ratigan's book "Greedy Bastards". Medicare is the wet dream for the 1% represented by the AMA. For example, the front page of the LA Times today has an article about a doctor who has received more than $236,000,000 from medicare. He was an opthamologist.