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Who benefits the most from the government? Rich or poor?

Who benefits the most?

  • Rich.

    Votes: 29 78.4%

  • Poor.

    Votes: 8 21.6%
  • Total voters
    37
lpast said:
Wont work...heres what you said quote

Quote Originally Posted by TurtleDude View Post
never said that. I just tire of trade school enlistees acting like everyone else ought to pay more taxes.

you have never provided any evidence that you are on a military disability or a 30 year careerist

I noted in other threads that such people deserve the benefit of whatever contract they entered


YOUR tired of trade school enlistees? you and most of the other rich slouchs couldnt live with out tradesmen...collectively the rich couldnt build themselves a doll house out of popsycle sticks...lol...you throw out so much of your seething hateful trash about the working class you forget what you say...
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I will get back to you when you figure out what posts you are responding to and what posts you want me to respond to.
 
Kali said:
You would have a point if they REALLY did. They do not and we have talked about this before.
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You cannot deny that the top one percent pay about 40% of the income tax and they make about 22% of the income. If you can prove otherwise feel free to do so

and you certainly cannot claim that the rich use 40% of the services paid for by the income tax and the bottom 50% only use a couple percentage points of that government services
 
It depends on how much government. Who benefits from some government is nearly everyone.

But who would benefit from big government. That is mostly insiders and they are mostly middle class. If you look at countries with lots of regulation and high governmental spending. You will find countries such as Italy, Greece and France. Scandinavian countries do have similar levels of governmental spending, but they have a lot less regulation.

In these societies, the ones on the inside, for instance Government workers benefit from better protection. Who are hurt in these societies? That is the young and the ones in private sector. Youth are not able to get a job, because businesses know that they can't fire them for poor performance. If they get a job, regulation state that they are the first one to get fired. The youth unemployment is 23% in France, 28% in Italy and 38% in Greece. US is at 19%, but remember 2 things. First off, US got some of the same problems. Secondly, the crisis hit US much harder than both France and Italy.

Some of you may mention Scandinavia, but they are in a completly different class. If US copied the policies in Scandinavia, US wouldn't get the same social outcomes. You can see that from Sweden who has accepted the most immigrants. The social outcomes for their minorities are absolutly horrible, and they have a youth unemployment of 23% even though the economy is doing really well right now.
 
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U.S. Socialist. said:
One of the arguments I've seen from a few posters as to why the rich shouldn't pay more taxes is because they claim the poor benefit the most from the government. I disagree and here is why. The rich use the highway system to ship their goods, they use public airwaves to advertise their goods, they use the courts far more than the poor, if they ship goods by air they have to rely on government air traffic controllers, and I'm sure it costs a lot of money to keep shipping lanes clear and open., especially from troubled parts of the world. The government also gives the energy industry large subsidies.

However, you could ignore everything I listed above and the fact would remain the the rich depend on the government for their very existence as a social class. The system that allowed them to make their money, capitalism, could not exist without a government.

The government enforces contracts and protects private property. These two things are necessary for capitalism to exist and neither one of them benefits the poor. If you remove the government from the equation then capitalism will collapse. So if the government decides to tax the rich at 90%, then they should pay without complaining, because every penny they own was made possibly by state violence in favor against the poor. To clarify I should point out that protection of private property does not benefit the poor, because they have own no private property. In this case private property refers to the means of production.
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False dilemma, everyone benefits in different ways, it's nearly impossible to say who benefits "the most".
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
False dilemma, everyone benefits in different ways, it's nearly impossible to say who benefits "the most".
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probably true so those who justify the top one percent paying 40% of the income taxes or demand they pay even more based on the claim the rich benefit more are just making stuff up
 
U.S. Socialist. said:
Without the government the rich would not exist. Without protection of private property and enforcement of contract your entire system would collapse. The rich owe every penny they have to the government for providing those two essential services. Therefore if the government decides to tax the rich at 90% then the rich had better pay.
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Without people who pay taxes, the government wouldn't exist, either. It's a team effort and I think most Leftists aren't getting that.
 
apdst said:
Without people who pay taxes, the government wouldn't exist, either. It's a team effort and I think most Leftists aren't getting that.
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I agree, but the rich should still pay more taxes because they get more benefits from the government.
 
TurtleDude said:
Rich people have always been rather good at protecting what they have. In a libertarian society, the rich would be free to earn and earn while looters would be shot or hung
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Ahhh...Somalia! That's what we should be aiming for!
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
False dilemma, everyone benefits in different ways, it's nearly impossible to say who benefits "the most".
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probably true so those who justify the top one percent paying 40% of the income taxes or demand they pay even more based on the claim the rich benefit more are just making stuff up
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The people who benefit the most from a social order as imposed by the law and culture of a nation are the people who obtain the most from it. In essence, the wealthy.
 
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Morality Games said:
The people who benefit the most from a social order as imposed by the law and culture of a nation are the people who obtain the most from it. In essence, the wealthy.
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If we went by an incredibly simplistic definition, you may have been right, but we have to view these things contextually.
Having a lot of money ≠ benefiting the most.
 
U.S. Socialist. said:
Without the government the rich would not exist. Without protection of private property and enforcement of contract your entire system would collapse. The rich owe every penny they have to the government for providing those two essential services. Therefore if the government decides to tax the rich at 90% then the rich had better pay.
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I sympathize with, and support the notion that rich people should pay higher taxes than poor people, but it's not true that the rich wouldn't exist without the government. They would still exist, they'd just be more entrenched and probably better armed.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
If we went by an incredibly simplistic definition, you may have been right, but we have to view these things contextually.
Having a lot of money ≠ benefiting the most.
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Unless you are referring to internal welfare (spiritual well-being), yes it does. The amount of money and possessions you are able to keep is the measure of your dependence on the social order.
 
U.S. Socialist. said:
Okay then explain how you measure dependence on the social order.
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It's difficult to do because we'd have to have a comparison of the exact same people without a "social order" to view it by.
You guys are also assuming that government establishes the social order and that some groups of people, just don't do it on their own anyway.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
It's difficult to do because we'd have to have a comparison of the exact same people without a "social order" to view it by.
You guys are also assuming that government establishes the social order and that some groups of people, just don't do it on their own anyway.
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They do indeed establish a social order in the absence of government. We've seen it many times; we saw it in Europe after the fall of Rome, and we saw it in Lebanon and Somalia in modern times.

It is called Warlordism. Whoever can gather a group of armed men willing to fight, kill and die on his orders, rules as much of an area as he can hold against the other warlords around him... for as long as one of his lieutenants doesn't assassinate him and take his place.

We know what the effects are: trade is stifled, poverty and want are rampant, violence is pandemic and civilization is minimal.

This is not an environment conducive to anyone, but certainly not conducive to the peaceful and non-coercive accumulation of capital which is the hallmark of the very rich.
 
Goshin said:
They do indeed establish a social order in the absence of government. We've seen it many times; we saw it in Europe after the fall of Rome, and we saw it in Lebanon and Somalia in modern times.

It is called Warlordism. Whoever can gather a group of armed men willing to fight, kill and die on his orders, rules as much of an area as he can hold against the other warlords around him... for as long as one of his lieutenants doesn't assassinate him and take his place.

We know what the effects are: trade is stifled, poverty and want are rampant, violence is pandemic and civilization is minimal.

This is not an environment conducive to anyone, but certainly not conducive to the peaceful and non-coercive accumulation of capital which is the hallmark of the very rich.
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You helped explain what I was getting at very well. Certainly rich people would exist without government, but the type of rich we have would not. Capitalism would not exist without our modern government to support it.
 
U.S. Socialist. said:
You helped explain what I was getting at very well. Certainly rich people would exist without government, but the type of rich we have would not. Capitalism would not exist without our modern government to support it.
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The early medieval period was particularly the time of warlords or robber barons. Until regional governments became relatively centralized (ie the king actually ruled, and granted charters to trade companies to do biz without being molested, etc) there was no middle class to speak of. As far as I know there weren't any fabulously wealthy commoners until well after Warlordism had begun to give way to the early Renaissance.

This is one of many reasons why I don't believe in anarchism, (right or left), or indeed any stateless solutions.
 
Goshin said:
They do indeed establish a social order in the absence of government. We've seen it many times; we saw it in Europe after the fall of Rome, and we saw it in Lebanon and Somalia in modern times.

It is called Warlordism. Whoever can gather a group of armed men willing to fight, kill and die on his orders, rules as much of an area as he can hold against the other warlords around him... for as long as one of his lieutenants doesn't assassinate him and take his place.

We know what the effects are: trade is stifled, poverty and want are rampant, violence is pandemic and civilization is minimal.

This is not an environment conducive to anyone, but certainly not conducive to the peaceful and non-coercive accumulation of capital which is the hallmark of the very rich.
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Government establishes the legal process, people organically establish the rest of the "social order."
It's spontaneous.

So to say that government is the largest part of the social order would be incorrect.
 
Goshin said:
They do indeed establish a social order in the absence of government. We've seen it many times; we saw it in Europe after the fall of Rome, and we saw it in Lebanon and Somalia in modern times.

It is called Warlordism. Whoever can gather a group of armed men willing to fight, kill and die on his orders, rules as much of an area as he can hold against the other warlords around him... for as long as one of his lieutenants doesn't assassinate him and take his place.

We know what the effects are: trade is stifled, poverty and want are rampant, violence is pandemic and civilization is minimal.
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As far as I'm aware, no-one is suggesting an absence of government. What I, for one, have suggested, is an absence of Nation-States, which is just a particular model of social organization. In order for society to exist, we need structure, we need rules, etc. However, there are different kinds of rules and structures. However; as far as I can tell, there is no law of physics that asserts that humans must be divided into warring, arbitrarily determined tribes, each with it's own seperate economy, tribal myths, where they are taught to fetishize objects and institutions, where the vast majority have very minimal participation, ruled by distant, authoritarian, monolithic institutions. I dare anyone to definitively prove this is the only viable model.

Goshin said:
This is not an environment conducive to anyone, but certainly not conducive to the peaceful and non-coercive accumulation of capital which is the hallmark of the very rich.
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The accumulation of capital has been anything but peaceful, it has been the source of brutal violence both domestically, and abroad. It is also absolutely coercive. The chief freedom accorded to the vast majority of people living under 'capitalism' is their 'right' to starve to death, if, at any point, they should choose to do so. That's not freedom.
 
apdst said:
Nobody benefits from big government. As long as there's a government that is hell bent on making more poor people, then poor people will never be able to improve their lives.
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Yes. Apdst. The government wants to make people poor. Because as we all know, societies with high levels of poverty are the ones government can exercise the most control over. You hear that 3rd world?
 
I have to say the poor. The poor benefits from the government through welfare programs, public facilities, etc...
The first post mentioned about how the rich benefits from the government as the government provides facilities for the rich to gain more monrey such as highways for transportation of goods, radio waves for the rich to advertise, etc... However, the rich can very well manage all of these, and if they are given the chance too, they will, as capitalism has shown. In fact, if the government didn't exist, the rich will flourish as there won't be any taxes or regulations to restrict their economic activity.
 
Other than Welfare and a dew handouts that are just enough to scrape by on I can't imagine how poor people benefit from programs that keep you poor.
 
Councilman said:
Other than Welfare and a dew handouts that are just enough to scrape by on I can't imagine how poor people benefit from programs that keep you poor.
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So let me get this straight. Welfare programs keep you poor. By that logic, governments without them would have less poverty. Correct?
 
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