Say what? How does existing law define any compliance with the definition of fair? Everyone's definition of fair varies. Is it fair that the rich pay more because they earn more? It is fair that the rich pay more because they own vast majority of assets in this country? It is fair that everyone pays the same amount? The problem with people like Turtle is that they define fair as they please and do not stick to that definition. I have no respect for people who unilaterally change their definitions based on how badly they are losing an argument.
Damn, that must give you fits when you look in the mirror.
There's a reason "fairness" isn't codified in law and why "fairness" is not a good basis for defining law in the first place.
"Fairness" is defined by mobs of uneducated greedy people seeking freebies. It's easier to define "equality", easier to regulate equal applications of the law, and easier to see where the cheats are happening.
An example given to the Mayor by a flaming socialist on another board was that some fund manager allegedly made $1,800 million dollars in one year and "only" paid 30% in taxes on this. He claimed it was totally "unfair".
The Mayor wanted to know what was "unfair" about one man paying over six hundred million dollars in taxes in one year. If that doesn't embody "fairness", how can anyone on the left even begin to define the term they throw around like mashed potatoes at a food fight?
It's not up to the govenrment to determine what a "fair" payment is. The government can't define fair, it can only balance the assorted compromises and develop an average value of fairness that will shift with the political currents.
The Mayor presented his views on fairness and income already. You are not arguing with those, you're whining that you can't argue them. Which is only fair.
That shouldn't be a problem as the COTUS doesn't cover that. Furthermore, taxation in excess of spending isn't necessarily a bad idea.
Yes, it's a bad idea. It siphons capital needed for growth and creates an asset the politician are as likely to leave alone as a six year old boy is to leave the scab on his knee alone. Guaranteed, they're both going to be a pickin'...
For instance, states do this all of the time. They deposit the surplus into rainy day funds which generate income which can be used for disaster, stimulus or budget balancing.
And then,....and then, along comes Willy Brown, the Democratic State legislature, and wuss named Wilson, and the state begins running uncontrollable deficits becuase once that keg is finally tapped, the drunkards start prominsing the brewery that they'll pay later for more beer today.
While it's pretty in theory, if you don't examine it closely, funds in excess of current and projected expenses, which must be locked up tight from prying politicians, are funds that are actually best left in the hands of the people who earned them.
Don't want the state to pay for that disaster looming? Pay for the fixed tangible assets needed to cope in advance. Don't expect that money left lying around will be lying around when it's needed. Look at all those states who supposedly had "pension funds", oh, gee, they're gone.
IMO, building a surplus is far preferable then deficit spending. I'd rather have the fed tax more, build a surplus fund and use that surplus fund for stimulus spending during recessions then borrow money.
The Senate in the 1980's decided that the Social Security funds being accrued for future obligations should be used to buy Treasuries. The same government decided that, gee, look at all that money that just came in. And spent it.
That's the natural fate of all rainy day funds, friend. The politicians steal it. It's what they do.
Listen, and understand! Those politicians are out there! They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. - From the film "Mr. Terminator-Smith Goes to Washington"
At least with that method we stay in the black. As Japan shows us, bad stuff happens. Going in to debt to fix that is not preferable when you can build up a safety fund during good times. What I vastly dislike about the Tea Party is that they don't seem to understand this .
Those Americans understand it just fine. And they're realists and know that a Congress that has proven it's perfidy cannot, by definition, be trusted to do the right thing. Allowing the United States Congress to hold "surplus" money is just as stupid as asking a heroin addict to hold onto your retirement funds.
And for the same reason.
Can you explain why you would trust Congress to do what Congress has proven it refuses to do, namely, handle money maturely?
The rich also own the greatest portion of asset.
Yeah, fancy that.
Just because a man owns money isn't an excuse to rob him. At some point the graduated tax scale becomes nothing more than a mugging, and the wealthy cease engaging in commerce and focus on capital preservation, and that's when the job creation comes to a grinding halt.
That does not logically follow.
Yes, it does. Anytime a mere 2% of the population is coerced to provide 50% of the national funding, they're being taxed excessively and the nation has to re-examine it's priorities. Be for real. 150,000,000 people in the US are getting a free ride.
To quote Captain John Smith:
Countrymen, the long experience of our late miseries, I hope is sufficient to persuade every one to a present correction of himself, and think not that either my pains, nor the [investors'] purses, will ever maintain you in idleness and sloth. I speak not this to you all, for diverse of you I know deserve both honor and reward, better than is yet here to be had: but the greater part must be more industrious, or starve, how ever you have been heretofore tolerated by the authorities of the Council, from that I have often commanded you. You see now that power rests wholly in myself: you must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled) for the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain an hundred and fifty idle loiterers.
No. It's clearly a spending issue. When confiscating the earnings of everyone will net only 1/3 of the amount needed to cover the spending, then the issue isn't the taxes, the issue is the spending. Anyone attempting to run their business or their family's budget in such a fashion is in for a rude surprise.
Come again? 50% don't pay federal taxes? You got this where? Last I checked, payroll taxes are federal taxes. And only around 45% of the country is not working. Actually 10% of the population is carrying 55% of the burden.
So you feel there's such a huge difference between 45% and 50% that you've refuted my claim? That forcing 10% rather than 2% to carry such a huge fraction of the burden is soooo much fairer that you can again claim to refute the point being made, which is that too damn many people in this country are free loaders expecting more handouts stolen from those who work?
Read the quote from Captain Smith carefully, it defines the founding sensibility of the entire American experiment.
As for no "rational" definition, well that is your opinion.
Yes, that's rational, the Mayor's opinion is.
Take this for example: The economy is basically a machine to generate material wealth.
The economy is a machine to generate material wealth for the people who earned it.
To be specific.
But that does through the two-inch Snap-On combination wrench into your argument, doesn't it?
The economy is kept going by taxes that support the economy and regulate it so that it functions properly. Now, who should pay the majority of taxes in such a system? Those who own very few of the total wealth or those who own the majority of the wealth?
Gee. How pretty. You've just described the libertarian system of limited government with a laissez-faire approach to business in which the minimalist necessary controls are funded by those profitting most from the existence of those protections.
Too bad what we're really discussing is the parasitic lamprey policies of cancerous unconstitutional entitlement spending that's devouring the nation and destroying it's ability to survive, as all cancers andn leeches do.
So much for your "no rational definition of fair is going to allow this."
Pbbfttt! The example you cited was your own strawman that had nothing to do with the realities facing the nation and the current budget processes. Social Security has nothing to do with regulatory requirements to prevent fraud and contract infringements among commercial enterprises. Nor does Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, the NEA, NPR, PBS, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Public Education System, and any of the other completely unconstitutional programs the producers are taxed to fund.
Your own attempt to define "fairness" excluded those and included only those items the Mayor would consider as fair.
So much for your attempt to reject the Mayor's superior ability to reason.
Which is nothing more than speculation.
No, clearly when the average man is being taxed at fifty percent of his earnings, the only position he can occupy on the Laffer Curve is the side wherein increased taxation leads to decreased government revenues.
Taxation =/= theft.
It certainly does when the destination of the collected revenues is illegal programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid...the list is three lines up, dude...
That depends how you look at things. See my earlier example.
The Mayor looks at things and sees the crashing end, and he doesn't want that for his children and grand children.
If you keep up the notion that taxation = theft, you are not worth talking you.
If you keep posting strawmen like that, you're going to have to buy a new farm.