What is a "fair" share for the wealthy?

[LTS TRN 2]

The current trend of simplistic "llibetarian" doctrine, which basically says get what you can and fuck everyone else--including fellow financial institutions--is itself the most pulsing and oozing symptom of America's disastrous economic implosion. Why do you "free-market" robots believe it's somehow tenable that CEOs and executives receive hundreds of times the salary of their company's employees? There's no developed nation--'cept Saudi Arabia--where this occurs. So..what's your rationale? What...you're scared racist squirming survivalist Tea Baggers...yes, you've made that clear...oh well... :doh:

[bradhusker]

RACK Mr. King for a well thought out essay on the subject. Breathlessly awaiting Sirfindafold's totally retarded response.

Can someone "off" this troll from wisconsin?

Mr King looks like a retard. He bashed Mitt Romney for "not giving back"??? WHAT THE FUCK???
Mitt Romney gives some 9 million dollars a year, EVERY YEAR to charity!!!

WHY DO LIBERALS LIE????? Please, someone tell me why a liberal sicko like Mr King just lied, yet again. WHY DO LIBERALS LIE?

[bradhusker]

what is wealthy? there is no de minimis line, wealthy is a relative concept....to homeless people, I probably seem incredibly wealthy...but I probably couldn't pay for a month of maintenance fees on one of Bill Gates summer homes....you can't define an abstract term in absolutes...given that you can't define the term, you can't define what is considered a "fair share"

That's crap, you're using emotive terms to describe something which is actually material and definite. Using your logic, you could claim that a homeless beggar has achieved 'equality' with an aristocrat in a castle, so long as the aristocrat has an unhappy marriage and the beggar is happy with his bottle of meths.

The difference here is that a homeless beggar does NOT have to be a pitiful cockroach. He does so by "choice".
For you not to understand this basic logic? Priceless.

[Truman]

So...what's stopping him from scratching a check? He never did answer.

The argument is that the rich should owe more in taxes, not that the rich should pay more than they owe.

So the top 1% earners should pay more than the 40.4% of the country's federal income tax they're already paying?

The top 10% earners should pay more than the 71.2% they're already paying? The top 50% more than 97.1%?

Who determines "rich"? Is $113K-a year-rich? Well, those folks drag the bottom of the 10 percenters.

And who determines "fair"? 71.2% seems a bit excessive. Some might even say, "unfair". Wouldn't a flat tax, as expressed as a percentage of income, be "fair" for everybody?

And if it's still not enough money, shouldn't the government maybe consider getting along with less?

King's rant is antithetical horseshit.

[bradhusker]

truman, I agree with you 100 percent. RAACK.

[poptart]

RACK Truman!

Wouldn't a flat tax, as expressed as a percentage of income, be "fair" for everybody?

Of course.

Income is income is income.



As noted, the "rich" already pay the freight.

Further, taxing the rich more isn't going to accomplish jack squat.

Nice video to demonstrate how utterly ridiculous the left is on this issue.

And if it's still not enough money, shouldn't the government maybe consider getting along with less?

Any adult ought to recognize it, Truman.

That so many somehow don't is really a pitifully sad commentary on how degraded the sensibilities of the people have become.

[poptart]

You toss a word like regressive out there only because you somehow want to operate under the strange notion that success ought to be punished - and you chase after some fantasy fairness ideal which can never come.

Use a 15% flat tax.

Two people work.

Dick earns $100,000 a year.
Jane earns $40,000 a year.

Dick pays $15,000 to the gov.
Jane pays $6,000 to the gov.

Even using a flat tax, Dick is still being dicked because he's paying the gov $9,000 a year more than Jane - and yet they are both getting the same services.

But no, that is not good enough for you.

Even under a flat tax, the rich would still massively be paying the freight.


People like you deserve to be slapped, seriously.

[poptart]

Do you have any concept at all of what a progressive tax is?

It's blatantly unfair.

Nobody has an innate right to someone else's earnings, just because you have dreamt up some goofball standard of fairness.

You friggin' weirdo.


Why do you hate achievement?

[poptart]

When S. Forbes ran for president, he offered a 17% flat tax on all personal income and an expansion of exemptions so that a family of four would pay no income tax on it's first $36,000 of income.

So under my Dick and Jane scenario, and using Forbes' paln (assuming they are both familes of 4), Dick would pay $10,800 to the gov and Jane would pay $680.

How on earth would you not see that as fair for Jane?


Under Forbes' paln, a family of four earning $200,000 a year would pay $27,880 and Jane's family would pay $680.

Still not good enough? lol


You spoke of history, but did you know that when the income tax was established, the tax rate was merely 1% on income above $3,000 - with a 6% surcharge on income of more than $500,000?

It started out somewhat sensibly, but people like you went ape-shit in the name of some fairness doctrine, and and it has turned into a total disaster.

All of us raped.

[Sirfindafold]

You got up in the morning and worked hard, big fucking deal. You and everybody else.

[Python]

I don't know how you can drive a fairness car by looking in the rearview mirror.

[LTS TRN 2]

You clowns have your heads in the sand with your simplistic doctrine. Look, the disparity of wealth in this country has gone completely off the charts, okay? Nothing like it even the good old robber baron days so fondly recalled by SS. Now..get this on one bounce....the capital gains tax is much lower than that of a regular job--you know, like a teacher or cop? The rich pay less in taxes, period. And, as you may have noticed with Apple, the corporations pay virtually nothing in taxes. There has been a systematic sucking of capital in the past decade or so that is unprecedented and extremely dangerous since these corporate minded money hoarders really don't seem to give a shit about the nation's massive infrastructure going straight to hell. And that's not just the roads and bridges, but our basic education system. Everything is being allowed to deteriorate and fail in light of the new extreme right GOP model as expressed so childishly by Paul Ryan. Everything except the military, whose Permanent War (on an abstract noun) will be duly funded with our tax dollars while enjoying the blessing of simplistic scardies like you.

[bradhusker]

You clowns have your heads in the sand with your simplistic doctrine. Look, the disparity of wealth in this country has gone completely off the charts, okay? Nothing like it even the good old robber baron days so fondly recalled by SS. Now..get this on one bounce....the capital gains tax is much lower than that of a regular job--you know, like a teacher or cop? The rich pay less in taxes, period. And, as you may have noticed with Apple, the corporations pay virtually nothing in taxes. There has been a systematic sucking of capital in the past decade or so that is unprecedented and extremely dangerous since these corporate minded money hoarders really don't seem to give a shit about the nation's massive infrastructure going straight to hell. And that's not just the roads and bridges, but our basic education system. Everything is being allowed to deteriorate and fail in light of the new extreme right GOP model as expressed so childishly by Paul Ryan. Everything except the military, whose Permanent War (on an abstract noun) will be duly funded with our tax dollars while enjoying the blessing of simplistic scardies like you.

LTS IS A JOKE!!!!!! Did he say fairness??? Is it fair for scumbags to sit home all day, do drugs and get a free check from the government, while I get up each and every day and go to work?

Is that fair LTS??

Is it fair that half the country works hard each and every day, while the other half sits at home and does drugs and gets a free check from the government?

Is that fair LTS??

YOU are without a doubt, the DUMBEST fuck to ever stroll in here.

FAIR?

[Mikey]

I don't know how you can drive a fairness car by looking in the rearview mirror.

That's a side view mirror.

sayin'

[Python]

You ever try to find a picture of a dog in a rear view mirror? I started off googling "dead dog in rear view mirror". I'm sure our IT guy will be contacting the authorities any time now.

[Derron]

Can someone "off" this troll from wisconsin?

If it were only that easy, your suck ass would have been blown out a long time ago.

[LTS TRN 2]

More simplistic bullet-point thinking. No one is suggesting that Bill gates or Zuckerberg are in any way whatsoever emblematic of the radical shift in wealth in this nation. As for your suggestion that "the money will flow' to tax havens if capital gains tax is made equitable, well this has already occurred and is increasing and has nothing to do with the already trimmed capital gains tax rates so worshiped by Reaganites, etc.

Now as for your utterly Limpdickian version of our infrastructure falling apart because of "millions of lab rats" on welfare, well how do you actually look in the mirror after saying such gibberish? Deal with the systemic facts of the matter--like CEO pay being hundreds of times the average worker's salary, and radical right-wingers who really want to sell all of the state's roads and infrastructure to private (often foreign) corporate interests so as to completely render government to the utilitarian functions of preparing for military endeavors and locking folks up--those these two growing industries are being privatized as well.

[Mikey]

You ever try to find a picture of a dog in a rear view mirror? I started off googling "dead dog in rear view mirror". I'm sure our IT guy will be contacting the authorities any time now.

I'll have to admit, I've never actually done that before.

You should just contact Marty. He'd be happy to wytch up something cute for you.

[mvscal]

so as to completely render government to the utilitarian functions of preparing for military endeavors and locking folks up.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Actually I simply want to render the federal government to its constitutionally mandated functions.

That would be nice.

[Dr_Phibes]

History? I don't know how you can drive a fairness car by looking in the rearview mirror (are we going to justify slavery on historical "fairness grounds too?). But if you want some history, check out the tax rates for in 1913

You probably could justify slavery, you can actually increase the overall economy by making some people worse off, it's a pareto-inferior outcome. 'It's all about the economy, stupid' and freedom don't neccesarily go hand in hand.
Pareto-optimisation (look it up) as the ultimate outcome of economics is based on a particular view of a society, in which it is assumed to bre made up of autonomous individuals with equal legal rights. Historically, that's a recent state of affairs.

The Roman Empire had an economy based on the exploitation of slave labour. Slaves made up about a third of the population, many of them were highly educated. You're looking at slavery through the lens of the race-based slavery of the 16th-19th centuries, which was particularly brutal and destructive, and which has given the institution of slavery a bad name ever since.

[Diego in Seattle]

88;
So you're agreeing that the argument that marriage should only involve opposite sexes because that's the way it's always been is a specious one?

[mvscal]

You probably could justify slavery, you can actually increase the overall economy by making some people worse off, it's a pareto-inferior outcome.

There is no economic justification of slavery to made. The South was an economic basketcase which didn't even begin to emerge from poverty and squalor until the most recent several decades or so. Rome was no different. Slavery kicked the bottom out of the labor market and their economy went into a slow death spiral.

You are totally clueless as usual.

[Dr_Phibes]

Well it certainly wasn't a permanent solution, an economy has to grow and evolve, it can't remain stationary. They did what they thought was right and it worked for a time.

And that's not quite true. The cost of preserving the life of a slave is less than the cost of maintaining the physical life, plus the income of the free worker. The Achilles heel of slavery is that the life of the slave must be maintained all the time, whether it is profitable to the owner to employ his labour power or not. A free worker can simply be dismissed. That gives greater flexibility to capitalism than to a slave-based economy. It's not cheaper, it's just more pliant (which is fortunate, given the boom and bust which has always characterised capitalism).

[Smackie Chan]

I don't know how you can drive a fairness car by looking in the rearview mirror.

That's a side view mirror.

sayin'

It's a side-mounted rear view mirror.

[bradhusker]

More simplistic bullet-point thinking. No one is suggesting that Bill gates or Zuckerberg are in any way whatsoever emblematic of the radical shift in wealth in this nation. As for your suggestion that "the money will flow' to tax havens if capital gains tax is made equitable, well this has already occurred and is increasing and has nothing to do with the already trimmed capital gains tax rates so worshiped by Reaganites, etc.

Now as for your utterly Limpdickian version of our infrastructure falling apart because of "millions of lab rats" on welfare, well how do you actually look in the mirror after saying such gibberish? Deal with the systemic facts of the matter--like CEO pay being hundreds of times the average worker's salary, and radical right-wingers who really want to sell all of the state's roads and infrastructure to private (often foreign) corporate interests so as to completely render government to the utilitarian functions of preparing for military endeavors and locking folks up--those these two growing industries are being privatized as well.

OH MY GOD! This proves that LTS is totally dellusional. 88 brought up valid piints about fat fucks getting free government checks, dumb fucks who make bad choices their entire lives. AND LTS counters with CEO's making ungodly huge salaries????

WHAT THE FUCK?

LTS cant seem to grasp simple logic here. ANY one of us in this board could quit our jobs tomorrow, not look for work, and do drugs. We could then go out and fuck women, bring more mouths to feed into the world, and begin to take free money from the government.

BUT WE DONT. We "CHOOSE" to work hard and make wise choices. LTS doesnt like "free will". LTS doesnt like "choices". LTS wants to blame others for the poor choices people make in life.

LTS? go to hell and rot there.

88? RAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!

[bradhusker]

Can someone "off" this troll from wisconsin?

If it were only that easy, your suck ass would have been blown out a long time ago.

The problem with your thinking Derron? My takes make sense and are filled with logic. So, suck it.

[bradhusker]

*one which I do not oppose the existence of, by the way. If the majority of the People decide the new relationship should be called a marriage, then fine. But if a majority of the People decide that the new relationship should be called a domestic partnership, then that is what it should be called. I do not believe the courts have the power to redefine words and trump the will of the People using the words in amendments to the Constitution ratified by the People that were never intended by the People to be interpreted or used in that way. It subverts the entire process and makes our government weaker when the courts do such things.

If all we were talking about is the name of a particular relationship, then perhaps your point would be valid.

Of course, marriage is much more than that. Marriage is a contract, and with it comes many rights recognized by our government. Absent good cause shown, to exclude a group from access to those rights is simply wrong, and clearly unconstitutional.

Jsc, TRY and keep up here. THAT IS what we are talking about, the "definition" of the word. Domestic partnerships and civil unions WILL contain the exact same rights. SO, with that being said, its the definition of the word which shall remain the same.

AND this is where I have a huge problem with you guys. Since we are saying that civil unions shall contain the exact same rights, YOU HAVE NO LEG TO STAND ON, other than your problem with the definition of the word. Which leads us to believe that you want the definition changed so you can shove your beliefs down our throats.

GOT YA.