Is it unreasonable for the wealthiest to pay a little more?

RabidAlpaca said:

This might be one of the most incorrect economic statements that I've ever read. The stock market is not a zero sum game.

Let's imagine a scenario for an instant. You want to form a company, you'll call it "Cannuck's High Quality Tables". You how ever don't have the start up resources for all the woodworking equipment you need, so you go to the market to look for investors. Mr. Romney comes along and says "I will give you $2 million dollars for a 40% stake in your company". (Kind of like the show 'Shark Tank', if you've ever seen it) Considering you'll never even get the business off the ground without him, you think that's a great deal, so you agree. Romney is taking a risk on you, he's risking $2 million on you, an investment that may or may not come to fruition.

Your then go on to make the world's finest quality tables and sell each for thousands, and people far and wide travel to spend their money on your tables. You make massive profits, which you pay 40% to your investor, Romney, who helped get your business off the ground. Now, explain to me again where the victim is in this situation.

You've so clearly deemed Romney a leach, I want to know how he's boning you in this situation, and who's being robbed?

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You example is how investment is supposed to work. It should be rather obvious that the current system no longer fits this model.

TurtleDude said:

so tell me-could Obamacare have happened without the jurisprudential actions of the New Deal occurring?

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Would the problems with our system have never been there? You see, it is the problems that generate reform and the ideology.

cpwill said:

Boo, sit up straight in your chair, raise your right hand to eye level hold your fingers together perfectly do not move any muscle other than the ones I direct you to (explicitly or implicitly - for example the heart should continue beating), sit there for 15 seconds in that position and then rapidly bring your hand up and down so that you pat the top of your head with your palm.


Oh, and if you don't do this I will have you thrown in prison.

Don't worry. I'm not "taking over" your actions. I'm just directing them. Totally different, right?

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I know you think that was a profound comparison, but it wasn't. Business leap in with both feet and said please makes me rich.

Would you not agree, Turtle, that greed affects all, that greed knows no boundaries, no political parties ?
I must admit that I can be greedy, that in the past, I have been, IMO.

I just can't wrap my head around how some people seem to think it is greedy to want to keep more of what you make, but it is not greedy to want the gov't to give you more of what someone else makes. :shrug:

OscarB63 said:

I just can't wrap my head around how some people seem to think it is greedy to want to keep more of what you make, but it is not greedy to want the gov't to give you more of what someone else makes. :shrug:

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Because they want the government to give it to them because they are greedy and incapable. It is simple Orwellian rhetoric at its finest.

RabidAlpaca said:

I think it's interesting that you despise so much the system you say you support. I've never seen anybody so disgusted with the free market as you, yet still claim to be a fan of capitalism. It takes some serious cojones to be that contradictory. Are you bitter because you made some poor investments? That was real money you lost, it's all real money. You claiming that the big investment firms are playing with fake money doesn't make it so. They simply have more than you do.

I don't think you have any idea what would happen if we shut the stock market down, as you're suggesting. The liquidity is there so that companies can do their business at a low cost, and so that they can attract funds from investors. The entirety of capitalism is dependent on this.

Speculation is also investment, it's just done for different purposes. The money goes to the same place regardless of what the intention of the investor was.

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First of all, there is not now, never has been, and never will be any "free" markets. ALL markets exist under some rules an enforcement, be it from within or imposed from outside. Those rules are what determine how a market works and who benefits from its operation. What we have now is an extreme imabalance in how risk is rewarded, and how privilege is dispensed.

You may not be old enough to remember what "investment" was several decades back. People put their money on the line in expectation of sharing profit. PEOPLE developed and owned companies to a much greater extent that "funds" did. Corporate governance consisted of people who had their OWN money at risk, and they represented themselves and their fellow shareholders from that frame of reference.

Today, boards are stuffed with employees who control large blocks of someone else's money and are subservient to their masters - financiers - who put them there. Similarly true for management. As I am implying: companies are run for the speculative gain of manipulating stock values, not for the purpose of running the COMPANY to profit from making its products or delivering its service. Frankly, bank's employees have no business whatsoever in the world of business.

This happens because we have granted them the privilege of being able to work with extreme conflict of interest where the institution that sold you your stock controls not only that transaction, but often the entire company behind it. The true test is to look at corporate governance from a compensation point of view. Executive compensation in the USA is several to hundreds of orders of magnitude greater than it is in the rest of the world. These are EMPLOYEES for crying out loud. They not only rob shareholders by ridiculous compensation, they also dilute shareholders to a state of insignificance by (with full cooperation of the financial managers who put them there and keep them there). Of course, since those shareholders are usually only tiny fractions of some fund, and also there not as investors, but purely as speculators, they neither know nor care what is happening to their equity.

You seem unable to appreciate that my opinions have nothing to do with my own personal situation. You (and 99% of the world of finance and economics) are so blinded by the religion of greed you can't even fathom that maybe my worries are for the world around me, not myself.

No, I do NOT use public funds, we are 100% private equity. Yes, I have been inside of the world of public corporations - and I have witnessed all of these things first hand - along with the destruction of the greatest economy the world had ever seen.

I do not wish to "shut stock markets down", merely to return accountability and ethics to their regulation and operation. All one has to do is reward those who take risk to CREATE wealth and stop rewarding those who merely speculate to redistribute wealth.

Once it becomes more favourable (and a hint for you: taxation is the most powerful tool in the world at influencing financial behaviour) to INVEST money in profitable, wealth creating ventures, that is what will happen.

What really, REALLY surprises me and kind of ticks me off is that most of the world has bought into the greed thing so hard that they are just not willing to THINK for ten seconds and look at what is going on around them. Even a mess of half-wits in the protest movements know that something is really, really wrong. They don't know what, nor what to do about it, but it is obvious even to someone so unproductive and idle that they can stand around for weeks on end with placards in their hand instead of getting off of their ass and going to work for a living that something in this system is broken, and broken very badly.

Your solution (and I mean more than just you individually - pretty much everyone in Manhattan and inside the beltway) is to simply do more of the same thing that crashed the economy not once, but many times and then racked up a debt that will NEVER be paid and somehow expect a different outcome.

TurtleDude said:

anytime some wealth redistributionist starts whining that the rich need to pay more (usually defined as anyone making more than the redistributionist in question) the first question is WHY does the government deserve even another penny?

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It goes beyond that for me. Its not even about deserving it or not. I believe more government is harmful to people - individually and collectively - harmful to the world, harmful in more ways than I can count. I do not want more federal police. I do not want more social programs. I do not want a bigger military. I do not want more regulators and more inspectors. I do not want more government forms.

I do not want more government. I want less government. Particularly less federal government. Therefore, I do not want the government to have more money. I want it to have less money. I wanted the government to "go off the fiscal cliff." I want the government to either reduce itself or be reduced by going broke if it can't control itself. The government is like a heroin addict in terms of power. It must always have more, even though more comes to destroy it - converting government from a "good" to a "bad."

Therefore, I do not want the government to have more money. I want it to have less money. Not for economic considerations, but because I want the government to have less power over people.

joko104 said:

It goes beyond that for me. Its not even about deserving it or not. I believe more government is harmful to people - individually and collectively - harmful to the world, harmful in more ways than I can count. I do not want more federal police. I do not want more social programs. I do not want a bigger military. I do not want more regulators and more inspectors. I do not want more government forms.

I do not want more government. I want less government. Particularly less federal government. Therefore, I do not want the government to have more money. I want it to have less money. I wanted the government to "go off the fiscal cliff." I want the government to either reduce itself or be reduced by going broke if it can't control itself. The government is like a heroin addict in terms of power. It must always have more, even though more comes to destroy it - converting government from a "good" to a "bad."

Therefore, I do not want the government to have more money. I want it to have less money. Not for economic considerations, but because I want the government to have less power over people.

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the beast must go on a diet and prove it can eat far less before we are forced to feed it more food

RabidAlpaca said:

That is a good point, why DO you big government types like to hand out so much money to corporations and the military industrial complex, then complain about not getting enough for social programs?

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I think you have me confused with someone else. I support those that voted against the optional wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and with those that voted last year against spending almost as much this year as the rest of the world combined on military.

You never ended up answering my question: How can you dub someone who pays substantially more both in real dollars and percentage in taxes than you, "not paying enough", while simultaneously labeling yourself as "paying enough"

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Romney and others who make most of their income from capital gains pay a lower percentage of their total income in taxes than do I.

Boo Radley said:

That's an awful slow creep. I repeat, it's 2013. :2funny::2funny::2funny::2funny:

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Indeed, the tax rates for the rich are less now than were during FDR's 3 terms as president. Would that be backwards creep?

Catawba said:

Romney and others who make most of their income from capital gains pay a lower percentage of their total income in taxes than do I.

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and again i point out that the govt runs on actual dollars...not percentages and romeny and his fat cat rich buddies still pay WAY more taxes than you do

OscarB63 said:

and again i point out that the govt runs on actual dollars...not percentages

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With fairness and the economy, percentages are more important. Why don't you hold an election and let the people decide if the wealthy should pay a little more in taxes. Oh, that's right, we just had an election and we the people decided the rich should pay a little more.

Catawba said:

With fairness and the economy, percentages are more important.

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again...the economy doesn't run on percentages.

Why don't you hold an election and let the people decide if the wealthy should pay a little more in taxes. Oh, that's right, we just had an election and we the people decided the rich should pay a little more.

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classic logical phallusy. funny how you guys always appeal to the masses when the masses agree with your position, but if you disagree then what the masses want becomes irrelevent. 300 years ago "the people" thought slavery was a good idea. 50 years ago "the people" thought homosexuality was an abomination, 50 years ago "the people" thought women should have the right to choose. and the list goes on and on.

OscarB63 said:

and again i point out that the govt runs on actual dollars...not percentages and romeny and his fat cat rich buddies still pay WAY more taxes than you do

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Actually, it runs on debt. The dollars collected come no where near expenditures. The Fed then just prints the money, so it matters not if you call it percentages, dollars or notes - it is all money that the government doesn't have and will never pay.

cannuck said:

Actually, it runs on debt. The dollars collected come no where near expenditures. The Fed then just prints the money, so it matters not if you call it percentages, dollars or notes - it is all money that the government doesn't have and will never pay.

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Well, we've been in debt almost since the beginning and will likely stay in debt, true. However, we can manage things more efficiently and try not to add to the debt. Especially when the economy is running smoothly.

OscarB63 said:

again...the economy doesn't run on percentages.

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The economy prospers when there is strong demand from a strong middle class. That was what the presidential election choice was about. One side wanted to continue trickle down economics and one side believed building a strong middle class was the best way to strengthen the economy.

Catawba said:

The economy prospers when there is strong demand from a strong middle class. That was what the presidential election choice was about. One side wanted to continue trickle down economics and one side believed building a strong middle class was the best way to strengthen the economy.

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how is giving more handouts to "the poor" going to create a strong middle class? experience over the past 60 years has shown that all it does is create an ever increasing population dependent on the govt.

OscarB63 said:

how is giving more handouts to "the poor" going to create a strong middle class? experience over the past 60 years has shown that all it does is create an ever increasing population dependent on the govt.

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You know nothing about what builds a strong economy if you think our 30 years of trickle down economics made the country stronger, which explains your surprise that trickle down economics was rejected by the people.

Catawba said:

You know nothing about what builds a strong economy if you think our 30 years of trickle down economics made the country stronger, which explains your surprise that trickle down economics was rejected by the people.

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deflect much? I never said dick about trickle down economics. now care to actually respond to what i did say? or are you just going to post another george carlin video :failpail:

OscarB63 said:

deflect much? I never said dick about trickle down economics. now care to actually respond to what i did say? or are you just going to post another george carlin video :failpail:

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Shows how much you know about the economy that you refuse to acknowledge the peoples choice between continuing trickle down economics or going to a bottom up approach by making the middle class stronger.

The debt that the US carried up to...oh, about Reagan, was repayable for a number of reasons. However, all that came starting with that administration of the Ridiculous Righteous Right no longer has a strong export economy nor a productive economy to generate the revenue to pay it back. On top of that, it has increased exponentially from the Looney Left's entitlements - that stand to add another $100 TRILLION or so over the next decade in unfunded liability. That is a very different scenario than what has existed during the previous century.

I think it was in this thread earlier when someone posted the some trends related to tax rates. When the top personal rate was 90% things weren't much different economically than they are now, so why is everyone so convinced that increasing taxes to the point where they at least make some tiny gesture towards servicing the existing debt is such a bad idea? On the other partisan hand, why would you let a government that has no visible means of support spend your children's and grand children's future on entitlements?

Even the Greeks have a better handle on how to manage their finances than Washington.

OscarB63 said:

how is giving more handouts to "the poor" going to create a strong middle class? experience over the past 60 years has shown that all it does is create an ever increasing population dependent on the govt.

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No liberal has ever said "Let's fix the economy by giving free money to poor slackers." Their current belief is that, by favoring working and middle class Americans, these people will have more of their own money to spend on products and services, which will in turn help the economy. We can't keep giving tax cuts to the "job creators" in the hopes that they'll create jobs; they already have the money to expand their industry and raise worker wages, they just choose not to. The last election was proof enough; $6 billion was spent on campaigning, and the vast majority came from SuperPACs and wealthy beneficiaries. Rather than trying to buy favors from the government, they could have used that money to raise wages or hire new employees.

Here's a prime example of trickle-down economics at work: Wal-Mart. CEO Michael Duke earns more in an hour than an associate earns in a year (according to ABC news, Duke earns $16,827/hr, while a new employee would earn $13,650/yr), and costs the federal government at least $2 billion in taxpayer money. Additionally, the Wal-Mart heirs are worth more than $100 billion together - a higher net worth than 40% of Americans combined.

Trickle-down is a good theory, but in practice, it has failed our nation horribly. As a species, we are, by nature, greedy, so when these rich individuals receive a tax break or corporate welfare, most of the time, they don't invest the money. They pocket it. We don't advance as a nation by repeating failed policies.

Vapor said:

We can't keep giving tax cuts to the "job creators" in the hopes that they'll create jobs; they already have the money to expand their industry and raise worker wages, they just choose not to.

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Thing is, the US does NOT give tax breaks to job creators, it gives them to financial speculators. Capital gains are taxed one time between 0% and 35%, whereas dividends are taxed once at the corporate level from 15% to 35% and then once again to the shareholder at 10% to 40%. Wall Street gets a free ride and Main Street gets clobbered. Care to guess who actually owns this and several previous Administrations???? Let me give you a hint: it ain't Main Street.

cannuck said:

Thing is, the US does NOT give tax breaks to job creators, it gives them to financial speculators. Capital gains are taxed one time between 0% and 35%, whereas dividends are taxed once at the corporate level from 15% to 35% and then once again to the shareholder at 10% to 40%. Wall Street gets a free ride and Main Street gets clobbered. Care to guess who actually owns this and several previous Administrations???? Let me give you a hint: it ain't Main Street.

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Where were you for the Bush tax cuts? The GOP's main argument was that it would help job creators, and repealing them would do the opposite. "Job creator" at this point is also a generic term for "rich guy." And let's not forget the billions of dollars in subsidies oil companies and other big businesses receive. I was involved with the Occupy movement for awhile, so I've heard most arguments about Wall Street and capital gains. Is it a problem? Yes, but its just one (major) face of a multi-faceted issue. Corporate executives benefit from investments and low capital gains taxes, too, but I'm more concerned with how employers' actions affect their employees, at this time. No one wants to believe the elite theory because it screams "conspiracy," so we do what we can. At this point, the best way to curb Wall Street's influence is by repealing Citizens United and reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act.