ABC's "20/20 - Lessons from Billionaires: Tax ME to create jobs IN AMERICA!"

Dickieboy said:

If you add the word 'earned' as in 'with enough EARNED income to be consumers' I will agree.

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Of course, jobs are much preferred to welfare.

Mach said:

That's outrageous. What the **** do you think minority rights are in general?

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They certainly do not include owning 80% of the country.

The majority is HARMED by me being forced to pay 35%-40% in taxes, far more in $$ than some pay in a life-time? I don't know how some of you guys manage to get food to your mouths when you then make claims like that.

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I agree we should reverse the trend over the last 30 years where taxes were reduced for the top 1% and raised for the middle class.

Catawba said:

They certainly do not include owning 80% of the country.

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Nor do rights exclude such a thing. Our rights don't guarantee equal ownership, nor should they. Our rights are process-focused, not outcome-focused. This is where we diverge.

I can agree that vast wealth and income disparities pose problems. Really, I can. Political instability mainly. Marx was right about this, but I'd like to not have to prove him right about the rest of history too. Specifically, I believe the market needs to disempower the rich, not the government (via taxes). The government is so deeply penetrated by corporations that the former cannot be trusted to govern the latter. The market has to fix it. In other words, shoppers. And not just with protests, but with their wallets too. We do it to single companies every once in a blue moon. Look at Netflix, jacking its prices way up and then paying for it oh so dearly. It would have to be grassroots revolutionary, because the alternative guarantees the status quo, where Goldman Sachs guards the Treasury, where Biotech staffs the FDA and USDA, where Wall St. staffs the SEC and advises the President, and where Big Business controls Congress, and so on and so forth. By asking government to tax the rich you're asking the very same ***holes to stop being ***holes.

I agree we should reverse the trend over the last 30 years where taxes were reduced for the top 1% and raised for the middle class.

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The top 1% is 3 million citizens. The richest of every 100 of us in the country. That's really quite a massive amount of people. There aren't 3 million uber-rich CEOs and gazillionaire hedge fund managers. The people we're really foamy at the mouth about are actually not very many people at all, running not very many banks and corporations at all. One percent seems like a room full of gazillionaires, but it's not. It's 3 MILLION people. And "just making them pay more" for the same basic services based upon the size of their bank accounts is hard to justify, particularly when its budgetary benefits are so questionable. And with most of the taxpayer burden lately being retrospective (quantitative easing) and prospective (deep deficit spending), WTF do income taxes really matter anyway?

If we want to give the middle and lower classes a break, we should not only riot in the streets, but boycott all large corporate campaign donors across the country when Congress passes a budget that is 20%, 30%, 40% or more IN THE RED. If we want to give the prudent small-time savers a break, we should not only riot in the streets, but also boycott ALL large corporate campaign donors when the Fed announces another round of quantitative easing or whatever other clever new name they've given to the practice of inflation. Taxes are effectively raised on the meek every time one of these two things happen. Say we get FedGov to hit the top 1% with an extra howevermany percent income tax.... well the old prudent savers and the unborn are already having their taxes jacked up by an order of magnitude greater each time they deficit spend and quantitatively ease. We're focusing on small potatoes and being quite whiny about the rich's refusal to punish themselves to try to accomplish a task We the People must take on ourselves.

Of course, boycotting all major corporations is very inconvenient for us in our personal lives. Can we handle personal inconvenience for the sake of our country? Or are we gonna keep bleating for someone ELSE to do our dirty work?

/rant off.

Catawba said:

They certainly do not include owning 80% of the country.



I agree we should reverse the trend over the last 30 years where taxes were reduced for the top 1% and raised for the middle class.

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one wonders how the top 1 percent pay a higher share of the federal income tax burden now than at any time in the last 70 years

Catawba said:

Eliminating the temporary tax breaks for the rich is not oppression, it is justice and smart economics. Tell me how the rich minority was oppressed in the 90's before the tax breaks were given to them?

How were the rich oppressed (even when their effective tax rates on all income was twice what it is now) in the half century between the 30's and the 80's when we had low debt and steady growth of the economy and the strongest middle class in the history of the US?

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It doesn't make good economics if the idea is to make excuses for ever increased spending.

Neomalthusian said:

Nor do rights exclude such a thing. Our rights don't guarantee equal ownership, nor should they. Our rights are process-focused, not outcome-focused. This is where we diverge.

I can agree that vast wealth and income disparities pose problems. Really, I can. Political instability mainly. Marx was right about this, but I'd like to not have to prove him right about the rest of history too. Specifically, I believe the market needs to disempower the rich, not the government (via taxes). The government is so deeply penetrated by corporations that the former cannot be trusted to govern the latter. The market has to fix it. In other words, shoppers. And not just with protests, but with their wallets too. We do it to single companies every once in a blue moon. Look at Netflix, jacking its prices way up and then paying for it oh so dearly. It would have to be grassroots revolutionary, because the alternative guarantees the status quo, where Goldman Sachs guards the Treasury, where Biotech staffs the FDA and USDA, where Wall St. staffs the SEC and advises the President, and where Big Business controls Congress, and so on and so forth. By asking government to tax the rich you're asking the very same ***holes to stop being ***holes.

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We tried this approach for the last 30 years, it hasn't worked.

The top 1% is 3 million citizens. The richest of every 100 of us in the country. That's really quite a massive amount of people. There aren't 3 million uber-rich CEOs and gazillionaire hedge fund managers. The people we're really foamy at the mouth about are actually not very many people at all, running not very many banks and corporations at all. One percent seems like a room full of gazillionaires, but it's not. It's 3 MILLION people. And "just making them pay more" for the same basic services based upon the size of their bank accounts is hard to justify, particularly when its budgetary benefits are so questionable. And with most of the taxpayer burden lately being retrospective (quantitative easing) and prospective (deep deficit spending), WTF do income taxes really matter anyway?

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Income taxes are how we pay our bills. Over the last 30 years, the middle class tax rates have gone up while the the tax rates for the rich have been lowered.

If we want to give the middle and lower classes a break, we should not only riot in the streets, but boycott all large corporate campaign donors across the country when Congress passes a budget that is 20%, 30%, 40% or more IN THE RED. If we want to give the prudent small-time savers a break, we should not only riot in the streets, but also boycott ALL large corporate campaign donors when the Fed announces another round of quantitative easing or whatever other clever new name they've given to the practice of inflation. Taxes are effectively raised on the meek every time one of these two things happen. Say we get FedGov to hit the top 1% with an extra howevermany percent income tax.... well the old prudent savers and the unborn are already having their taxes jacked up by an order of magnitude greater each time they deficit spend and quantitatively ease. We're focusing on small potatoes and being quite whiny about the rich's refusal to punish themselves to try to accomplish a task We the People must take on ourselves.

Of course, boycotting all major corporations is very inconvenient for us in our personal lives. Can we handle personal inconvenience for the sake of our country? Or are we gonna keep bleating for someone ELSE to do our dirty work?

/rant off.

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Boycotts have their place but cannot take the place of sound policies that served us so well during the most stable growth in history combined with the strongest middle class. Progressive taxation and separating commercial banking from investment banking need to be our top priorities.

TurtleDude said:

one wonders how the top 1 percent pay a higher share of the federal income tax burden now than at any time in the last 70 years

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Its not exactly a mystery. As more wealth is concentrated at the top, even with tax rates that have been lowered over the last 3 decades for the rich, there is less money at the bottom to pay taxes on. It is the end result of trickle down economics. Bon appetit!

1Perry said:

It doesn't make good economics if the idea is to make excuses for ever increased spending.

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Correct, we also need to cut spending.

Catawba said:

Its not exactly a mystery. As more wealth is concentrated at the top, even with tax rates that have been lowered over the last 3 decades for the rich, there is less money at the bottom to pay taxes on. It is the end result of trickle down economics. Bon appetit!

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What kills tax revenue more than anything else, is when the government destroys the job market.

apdst said:

What kills tax revenue more than anything else, is when the government destroys the job market.

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Yes the Democrats have put up a bill to eliminate the tax breaks for companies outsourcing jobs overseas and guess who has blocked it?

Last year the GOP said we had to continue to the tax breaks for the rich to create jobs. Where are those jobs?

Catawba said:

We tried this approach for the last 30 years, it hasn't worked.

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I contrasted two different approaches in the run up to this comment. Which are you suggested we "tried" that didn't work?

Income taxes are how we pay our bills.

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Not when our bills exceed our revenue by $1.6 TRILLION in a single year. Income taxes are how we pay a few of our bills. Devaluation is how we pay some others. Debt that we don't ever intend to repay is how we pay for others still. You'd have seen this if you read my post.

Boycotts have their place but cannot take the place of sound policies that served us so well during the most stable growth in history combined with the strongest middle class.

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You make the common mistake of assuming causality where there's barely even correlation. There were many factors that had to do with our growth over the last century and particularly in the 50s - 70s that do not boil down to "what were the tax rates?" Boycotts can do more than take the place of "sound policies." We just don't want to voluntarily bring about consequences to our lifestyles to effect the change we want to see. We'd like someone else to do that for us. You can't expect to American People to reward the same handful of huge corporations with all their purchases but expect some different result than them ending up with all the money and hence all the power.

Progressive taxation and separating commercial banking from investment banking need to be our top priorities.

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The latter is agreeable. The former is based on misguided assumptions.

Neomalthusian said:

I contrasted two different approaches in the run up to this comment. Which are you suggested we "tried" that didn't work?

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I choose returning to progressive taxes.

Not when our bills exceed our revenue by $1.6 TRILLION in a single year. Income taxes are how we pay a few of our bills. Devaluation is how we pay some others. Debt that we don't ever intend to repay is how we pay for others still. You'd have seen this if you read my post.

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It took 30 years of spending too much and taxing the rich too little to create our debt problem, it will take 30 years of the reverse to fix it.

You make the common mistake of assuming causality where there's barely even correlation. There were many factors that had to do with our growth over the last century and particularly in the 50s - 70s that do not boil down to "what were the tax rates?"

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Yes, there was also deregulation of the banking industry. Tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation - Reaganomics they called it.

Boycotts can do more than take the place of "sound policies." We just don't want to voluntarily bring about consequences to our lifestyles to effect the change we want to see. We'd like someone else to do that for us. You can't expect to American People to reward the same handful of huge corporations with all their purchases but expect some different result than them ending up with all the money and hence all the power.



The latter is agreeable. The former is based on misguided assumptions.

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In your opinion.

Catawba said:

It took 30 years of spending too much and taxing the rich too little to create our debt problem, it will take 30 years of the reverse to fix it.

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Not in an era of oil decline concurrent with the rampant industrialization of the world's most populous countries. If there is a fix to it, it extends light years beyond tax rates. Tax rates won't give us back the global hegemony we had 30-60 years ago, and we don't have (and won't have) the per capita energy availability, or the need for human labor hours, to enjoy an era of progress like that... ever ever again.

In your opinion.

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Yes, in my opinion, of course. We are discussing this issue based on our respective opinions.

Neomalthusian said:

Not in an era of oil decline concurrent with the rampant industrialization of the world's most populous countries. If there is a fix to it, it extends light years beyond tax rates. Tax rates won't give us back the global hegemony we had 30-60 years ago, and we don't have (and won't have) the per capita energy availability, or the need for human labor hours, to enjoy an era of progress like that... ever ever again.

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I never claimed that restoring progressive taxes was the "fix" for all our problems. That is simply one thing that needs to be done. No other country has greater Global hegemony than the US. If we wish to maintain that, we must excel in education and innovation (especially in the area of alternative energy) and put our country back to work doing that. That includes eliminating tax incentives for companies to locate overseas, which the Democrats put up bill to do just that. And we need to again separate commercial banking from investment banking, which creates banks too big to fail that destroy people's life savings. And we need to upgrade our health care system as the rest of the industrialized world has done. And we need to cut our most wasteful spending on the military/industrial complex, our optional wars and return to defense only spending.

Grant said:

The sad truth is that it often difficult to tell other people how much tax they should pay because they can just leave. And why not? Other countries with lower taxes have great climates, high speed internet, the latest movies, night clubs, are scenic, relatively safe, etc.

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Really? I say, let them go.

The G.O.P. says global competitiveness requires the United States to reduce its corporate tax rate. But the United States actually has the lowest corporate tax burden of any of the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Bruce Bartlett: Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low? - NYTimes.com

So it doesn't really matter what Americans were paying 20, 50 or 100 years ago, it's what people must pay now, and whether or not they are getting their money's worth. There are just more opportunities now in more countries and fewer reasons to invest in the United States. This is good because now countries must be more competitive to attract money and people, which allows greater freedoms then we have known in the not so distant past. Bur we must also adjust to this changing reality or Detroit will soon arrive in your neighborhood.

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Keep drinking the KoolAid.

TurtleDude said:

and you seem to have no problem with most of america paying much lower rates than the rich so your indignation is a joke

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The fact that half of America doesn't pay taxes doesn't even register with you that it is because they don't make enough money to even pay taxes. All that caught your eye was that they didn't pay taxes - just shows how brainwashed most conservatives are. They turn a blind eye to the rich soaking up all the money in the country off the backs of the middle class and all they can see is that the poor who don't make enough money aren't paying any taxes.

Catawba said:

I choose returning to progressive taxes.





It took 30 years of spending too much and taxing the rich too little to create our debt problem, it will take 30 years of the reverse to fix it.





Yes, there was also deregulation of the banking industry. Tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation - Reaganomics they called it.




In your opinion.

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taxing the masses too little for what they want in government has caused too much government

when the takers demand more and more and don't pay for it of course the crap's gonna hit the fan.

I choose making those who want more to pay more.

mertex said:

The fact that half of America doesn't pay taxes doesn't even register with you that it is because they don't make enough money to even pay taxes. All that caught your eye was that they didn't pay taxes - just shows how brainwashed most conservatives are. They turn a blind eye to the rich soaking up all the money in the country off the backs of the middle class and all they can see is that the poor who don't make enough money aren't paying any taxes.

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that's complete BS-just about everyone can pay something and if they cannot, they sure as hell shouldn't be demanding more and more from others

mertex said:

The fact that half of America doesn't pay taxes doesn't even register with you that it is because they don't make enough money to even pay taxes. All that caught your eye was that they didn't pay taxes - just shows how brainwashed most conservatives are. They turn a blind eye to the rich soaking up all the money in the country off the backs of the middle class and all they can see is that the poor who don't make enough money aren't paying any taxes.

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This is the delusion they must create in order to get by. Otherwise, their conscience would take over.

It's also why they ignore facts like CEO wages increasing 27% between 2009 and 2010, while employee pay rose 2.1% and the unemployment rate stayed marginally stagnant.

The American system has been completely gamed - and instead of the CEO's and the boards rewarding them so foolishly - we blame the President. He's the reason unemployment isn't any better. He's the reason CEO's are raking in an average of $9.4 million each while the rest of the country struggles. It's not the CEOs at all - nor is the board of directors who appoint and approve such massive salaries and bonuses. All Obama's fault that this continues to happen even as most American's suffer. He specifically makes that happen and is responsible for that behavior occurring - as it has - for the past 35 years or so as the wealthiest Americans accumulated and consolidated nearly all of the economic growth the country has seen. All his fault.

Neomalthusian said:

Not in an era of oil decline concurrent with the rampant industrialization of the world's most populous countries. If there is a fix to it, it extends light years beyond tax rates. Tax rates won't give us back the global hegemony we had 30-60 years ago, and we don't have (and won't have) the per capita energy availability, or the need for human labor hours, to enjoy an era of progress like that... ever ever again.



Yes, in my opinion, of course. We are discussing this issue based on our respective opinions.

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Unfortunately, the ultimate fix is nature's way. It wont be kind and gentle.

FilmFestGuy said:

This is the delusion they must create in order to get by. Otherwise, their conscience would take over.

It's also why they ignore facts like CEO wages increasing 27% between 2009 and 2010, while employee pay rose 2.1% and the unemployment rate stayed marginally stagnant.

The American system has been completely gamed - and instead of the CEO's and the boards rewarding them so foolishly - we blame the President. He's the reason unemployment isn't any better. He's the reason CEO's are raking in an average of $9.4 million each while the rest of the country struggles. It's not the CEOs at all - nor is the board of directors who appoint and approve such massive salaries and bonuses. All Obama's fault that this continues to happen even as most American's suffer. He specifically makes that happen and is responsible for that behavior occurring - as it has - for the past 35 years or so as the wealthiest Americans accumulated and consolidated nearly all of the economic growth the country has seen. All his fault.

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Fortunately, the 99% are belatedly catching on and speaking out! I have not seen this kind of awareness since the Vietnam war protests which brought about an end to the war.

Objective Voice said:

I know the stardard rhetorical argument from Conservatives/Republicans "why do you hate the rich?, why do you want to take money from wealthy people? all poor people want are hand-outs" and all the other "redistribution of wealth" arguments, but I've got news for you people. It's no longers just Warren Buffet saying "tax me! I'm good for it" to create jobs in America.

These promonent BILLIONAIRES are also saying "TAX ME! We want to create jobs IN AMERICA because the People want...NEED to work!" Watch these video interviews given by Barbara Walters on ABC's "20/20" of BILLIONAIRES who are saying "TAX ME! CREATE JOBS IN AMERICA!" Even they agree with the Occupiers need to put America back to work!!

Again, the Occupy Movement IS NOT anti-capitalism. It IS anti-corruption. The People just want a job and for AMERICA to get back to work!!!

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If I had a few billion laying loose, and if I believed it should be used to create jobs for the good of the country, I would get together with some of my buddies in the same situation and open up a new factory, firm, or other place of employment. Everybody wins. People get jobs, the billionaires get to be even bigger billionaires, and the government would benefit by having less people on unemployment-welfare and they would collect more taxes. Or, I could just sit around whining that nobody will come and take my money forcibly from me to let the government create jobs.

mertex said:

Really? I say, let them go.

The G.O.P. says global competitiveness requires the United States to reduce its corporate tax rate. But the United States actually has the lowest corporate tax burden of any of the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Bruce Bartlett: Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low? - NYTimes.com


Keep drinking the KoolAid.

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I'm not saying that this doesn't need looked at but there is one thing I do not get. The arguement is that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the lower and middle class. Do you not understand that raising taxes on corporations is going to hurt the middle and lower classes the most?

As much of a utopian belief that corporations will just eat this tax they won't. They will simply pass it along. Where they can't, they will come up with new ways to cut costs. (employee's)

Catawba said:

Fortunately, the 99% are belatedly catching on and speaking out! I have not seen this kind of awareness since the Vietnam war protests which brought about an end to the war.

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OWS's problem is that unlike the 60s where the anti war protest had a clear message, and were unified in what they wanted, today the 'demands' of OWS range all the way from making a broad based point that might actually have traction if they were going about it in the proper way, to anarchy, mayhem, and crime that makes them look like foolish spoiled children.

j-mac

So....I'm still waiting for one of these philanthropist billionaires to put their money where their mouth is.

I mean, is there some sort of law that states that though shalt not give more than required, in terms of federal or state income taxes? Short of there being a law, with prison time attached, preventing one from wanting to give more of their earnings than is legally required...


I am still having a hard time trying to understand what these people don't just do that.


Catawba, opinions? Care to weight in on why someone wouldn't just take the initiative?