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Wealth distribution

reason10 said:
The poor in America are that way by choice. And America has the world's richest poor. Every communist country is a ghetto compared to the United States.
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Not really true.

There are lots of reason why people are poor or homeless. Some teenagers run away from abusive parents.

Some lose their homes and there are simply no other opportunities for them.

others are mentally ill.
 
Imperium populi said:
I see no reason for this as it is for the greater good.
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A Government is there to govern. Not to give you things.

There is a difference between taxing the people to support the running of a Government (a necessity), and taking from one to give to another (theft).
Theft is not a "greater good" no matter or you want to spin it.
 
dimensionallava said:
if your poor in many countries, you can get a free home, have a guaranteed income from the government, and get free medical care and job training and access to mental health and addication treatment. if your in america and your poor you get to die in a gutter covered in lice, filth and your own feces while people laugh and spit on you
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you can do all of that in the US as well.
Forbes Welcome

also he is right. they are better off than the majority of other people in the world.
 
Imperium populi said:
Wealth distribution is often frowned upon in America. I see no reason for this as it is for the greater good. "What enriches the part enriches the whole"(Karl Marx). I am for wealth distribution, most advanced countries have a form of it. Why are so many Americans against it and what do they perceive wrong with it?
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Mostly we do not have a better distribution of wealth in the United States because it is so heavily influenced by the American conservative movement...which is pretty much a "hooray for me, screw you mentality."

I think we will eventually get over this cancer masquerading as a political philosophy...but it will not be easy or soon.

Have heart.

We are working on it.
 
Frank Apisa said:
Mostly we do not have a better distribution of wealth in the United States because it is so heavily influenced by the American conservative movement...which is pretty much a "hooray for me, screw you mentality."

I think we will eventually get over this cancer masquerading as a political philosophy...but it will not be easy or soon.

Have heart.

We are working on it.
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I would say that the ideologies that have to be forced upon people at the expense of their liberty and sometimes even their lives are the ones that are cancerous

The ideologies that promote theft thinly veiled as a humanitarian initaive are the ones that are cancerous

The ideology that offers " equality " and delivers mediocrity, dependence and misery, that's the ideology that's cancerous.
 
dimensionallava said:
if your poor in many countries, you can get a free home, have a guaranteed income from the government, and get free medical care and job training and access to mental health and addication treatment. if your in america and your poor you get to die in a gutter covered in lice, filth and your own feces while people laugh and spit on you
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Where do the funds that pay for those programs come from? Nothing is free!
 
WCH said:
It's a Communist ploy to make us think we're all equal while the government controls every facet of our lives.

Why do you think you deserve other people's money?
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The problem with your statements is you somehow believe that wealth is created in a vacuum - a product of nothing but one's own resources.

Why do you think the rich deserve a majority of the benefits coming from technology advancements and globalization over the past 200 years (or longer)?

Put a different way, nobody is advocating for communism. The concerning part is the CHANGE. About 40 years ago the gap between a ceo and his workers was 40x - today it's 400x or more. How do you justify this?
 
We already do have redistribution in th eUS via the progressive federal tax code. Wealthy people pay most of the federal taxes and Government spending benefits poorer people more than wealthy people. I think most people are fine withe concept, just not the degree.
Phony lib politicians ( HE BARACK!!! HI HILLARY!!!! HI BERNIE!!!) are always there to tell us wealthy people don't pay their "fair share".
 
Imperium populi said:
Wealth distribution is often frowned upon in America. I see no reason for this as it is for the greater good. "What enriches the part enriches the whole"(Karl Marx). I am for wealth distribution, most advanced countries have a form of it. Why are so many Americans against it and what do they perceive wrong with it?
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People are against it because they naively believe that if they took it, it's theirs. They look at their pretax gross rate as their personal market value. The problem is they don't understand is that the market and their market value are part of the same system. The market they take their wealth from is not something they created so why should they be able to take what they want from it? In other words - your NET is your market rate.

Our economy has every right to protect itself from pooling wealth. A dollar that is saved by somebody that doesn't actually spend it is no longer participating in our economy. That dollar either needs to be replaced (deficit spending) or the private sector will have to contract. Wealth redistribution (thru taxes) is one of the mechanisms to make sure our economy can run at its full potential. That said, it's also something that can be used to cool an overly hot economy - raising taxes on those that spend slows demand, while lowering it on those that save/invest can help expand supply. Of course that problem is that we're a long way from that latter problem.
 
jonny5 said:
We believe in liberty. Taking someones property without consent is wrong.
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I think there's a pretty good chance that the economy needs more to function than your narrow view of "liberty."

Is the economy yours? Did you create it? If not, what right do you have ignore the rules placed on that economy?

Why is your take-home pay not your "property", why do you think you deserve your gross and not your net? Do you complain to retailers that you should be paying wholesale prices??
 
Ancient Herald said:
I'm incredibly tired of everybody doing what they can to take my money away and put me out on the streets.

Socialists, Communists, Capitalists, and Corporatists all.

They can all go to hell as far as I'm concerned.

god, what is important about money that I can't be allowed to keep my own so that i can have a reasonable comfortable living for myself?

you say I shouldn't be upset because it's only money, well if it's only money, why can't i keep my own share and why can't you ever be happy with what you have and why can't you ever just stop taking it from me and everybod else?


You money hungry power mad screw ups can read between the three fingers.
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The conversation is about redistribution which is nearly the perfect opposite from taxes on people can't afford to live in the first place. If you only have a "reasonable comfortable living" then most that support the idea of some redistribution would say you should hardly be paying any taxes if not getting credits. The question that then follows is would you grant your fellow citizens the same courtesy by paying MORE taxes if you were to become rich.
 
pdog said:
I think there's a pretty good chance that the economy needs more to function than your narrow view of "liberty."

Is the economy yours? Did you create it? If not, what right do you have ignore the rules placed on that economy?

Why is your take-home pay not your "property", why do you think you deserve your gross and not your net? Do you complain to retailers that you should be paying wholesale prices??
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Yes, its my economy. Yes, i created it. My take home pay is my property, so is the rest of it. I consent to give some of it to the govt, and they justly compensate me with services. Wealth distribution is not a service I consented to, thus its a violation of my rights.

I dont complain to retailers because what Im buying is THEIR property.
 
ludin said:
good you can distribute your wealth all you want to. you don't get to choose what other people do with their wealth.
I think this ends this discussion.
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This another argument against taxes in general - it's not a statement about redistribution at all.
 
Neomalthusian said:
The distribution of wealth has shifted strongly away from working middle class families and toward pensioners. The poverty rate of seniors has dropped two thirds in the last fifty years with the poverty rate for younger and middle age adults doubling over the same period. Now we have enormous unfunded pension liabilities and there is no serious talk of reforming them, rather the plan is to make the group of Americans who are already poorer than ever before in relative terms just come up with the difference, and then when they retire the age of pensions will be over. The intergenerational inequality is appalling, and very few seem willing to acknowledge it.
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I'm confused on whether you're in favor of wealth distribution or not. Seniors out of poverty seems like a good thing. Maybe the working middle class is paying for this because of a LACK of redistribution?
 
pdog said:
This another argument against taxes in general - it's not a statement about redistribution at all.
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then you evidently didn't read what I was responding to.
it actually is a statement against redistribution.
 
Imperium populi said:
Wealth distribution is often frowned upon in America. I see no reason for this as it is for the greater good. "What enriches the part enriches the whole"(Karl Marx). I am for wealth distribution, most advanced countries have a form of it. Why are so many Americans against it and what do they perceive wrong with it?
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Well, just on principle I would be opposed on the grounds that normally no logically reason is given for distributing the wealth. The "reason" tends to be religiously based. The Bible, and Judeo-Christian societies, have this morality about the evils of wealth and the need for charity and compassion for the poor. I am not going to "fall" for some religious morality.

I believe that the role of government is to do the greatest good for the greatest numbers for the longest period of time. It makes no sense to me to give money to people who are unable or unwilling to work and to contribute to society. Those people are drags on the economy. I have no compassion. We have separation of church and state so we should not follow Obama's thinking that "we should help the poor because the Bible tells us to". Yes, he actually said that.

Now if you can explain in logical objective thinking how distributing wealth helps the greatest numbers for the longest period of time, I would support it. I read Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality and even he fell back to morality, not economics, IMHO.
 
pdog said:
I'm confused on whether you're in favor of wealth distribution or not. Seniors out of poverty seems like a good thing. Maybe the working middle class is paying for this because of a LACK of redistribution?
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http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/
this says who is paying all the taxes.

we are dealing with a very unstable tax system.
 
OP, conservatives dislike the concept because it is anti capitalist and capitalism is the source of the wealth that has made us the most powerful country in the world. Now, if you want us to be weaker and poorer then your preference is a good way to accomplish that.
 
Fenton said:
I would say that the ideologies that have to be forced upon people at the expense of their liberty and sometimes even their lives are the ones that are cancerous
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I am fairly certain you would. But that has nothing to do with what I said.

The ideologies that promote theft thinly veiled as a humanitarian initaive are the ones that are cancerous
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American conservatism is, in my opinion, a cancerous excuse for a political philosophy.

Obviously we disagree on that. I have no idea of how to resolve that.

The ideology that offers " equality " and delivers mediocrity, dependence and misery, that's the ideology that's cancerous.
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Whatever. I have stated what I consider a reasonable explanation for why America does not have a better, fairer distribution of wealth...and I am sticking with that. We disagree.
 
ludin said:
you can do all of that in the US as well.
Forbes Welcome

also he is right. they are better off than the majority of other people in the world.
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This is just changing the subject. What we do with our poor should be measured relative to OUR OWN economy. You're effectively saying, that we've met our (fictitious) obligation to the poor, now we get to keep the rest. Our economy belongs to all americans. People will certainly benefit from it more than others, but the question is, when do you step in when somebody starts to run away with so much that they actually put the system in jeopardy.
 
fmw said:
OP, conservatives dislike the concept because it is anti capitalist and capitalism is the source of the wealth that has made us the most powerful country in the world. Now, if you want us to be weaker and poorer then your preference is a good way to accomplish that.
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Well...the fact that we were able to rape an entire continent of incredible resources helped a bit...wouldn't you say?

For all we know...a socialistic regime with the resources we've had at our disposal over the last few centuries might be much further along.
 
pdog said:
This is just changing the subject. What we do with our poor should be measured relative to OUR OWN economy. You're effectively saying, that we've met our (fictitious) obligation to the poor, now we get to keep the rest. Our economy belongs to all americans. People will certainly benefit from it more than others, but the question is, when do you step in when somebody starts to run away with so much that they actually put the system in jeopardy.
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I didn't change the subject at all. I prove what was said what true. the bottom 10% in this country live better than most people do elsewhere.
which is a fact that someone disputed.

now you are making stuff up. either follow the conversation at hand or don't post on it.
 
ludin said:
good you can distribute your wealth all you want to. you don't get to choose what other people do with their wealth.
I think this ends this discussion.
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Half of the businesses I was in involved with had some type of crooked doings- and that's only the ones I stumbled upon. I think commerce and corruption is inseparable. Then there's wealth gained by lobbying congress, buying congressmen, and don't forget the all time favorite: screwing the workers! So let the redistribution begin!
 
ludin said:
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/
this says who is paying all the taxes.

we are dealing with a very unstable tax system.
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Page not found.

But let me save you the time if you're posting what income classes are paying the most taxes - there's no meaning when somebody paying the majority of taxes....when they extract the majority of the money.

The only thing unstable about our system is when a dollar stops buying things - like when a guy with a billion of them already has nothing else he wants to buy. That's a dollar that stops being part of our economy. It either needs to be replaced (with government deficits) or it needs to be moved to where it can be spend. That is the core and irrefutable argument for redistribution - you're either for redistribution, deficit spending, or a shrinking economy. Take your pick.
 
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