Would you rather be born in the bottom 20% of wealth in America or achieve the upper 20% of wealth in China? And that's such a silly question by you when you consider that the average worker in China makes like $5,000 under awful conditions. But congrats on China for having the upward mobility that enables people to eventually get to the American poverty line if they're lucky enough and work hard enough under conditions so terrible it is illegal to do so in America.

no, but I don't think the way to fix that is through taxing the upper class at ultra high rates either. I think taxes should be higher and have said that many times, but they should also be higher on the poor. The reason this would still benefit the poor would be that we would add a whole lot of social programs that would benefit the poor more than they would benefit the rich on a relative basis.

also, thayer's point of the top 20% being a lower threshold in China is relevant.

You been hanging out with CDL lately? It's amazing how both of your political philosophies reduce humans to a series of rational choices in a zero-sum game. Not to mention you apparently don't give a **** about the kids themselves as long as you can punish the adults for having them.

What's arbitrary about it? You gave the reason right here. Their lives are worse off. We have the means to make them better, and it wouldn't cost much that we aren't already wasting or can't take from people who, functionally speaking, will never miss it.

No one's saying you MUST do the decent thing, I guess, if that's what you really want to argue.

But these are all strawmen! You keep insisting that the ONLY way to provide a decent standard of living for people is through some odious method that you consider a worse evil than their continued suffering. You complain about all the money the federal government wastes; why not redirect it to those things? (That's just ONE example of a solution.)

You're right, maybe we should just let local governments or the community take care of the worst off among them. That totally worked when we tried to integrate the South, right?

Also CDL: In your winners and losers argument you're missing one key factor that I think is missing from your entire world view. From having met you, knowing your educational background and work background, are likely in the top 1-2% of raw analytical intelligence in this country. Smart people generally find their way one way or another. I grew up in a middle class family in a lower-middle class town, and a lot of what I've done involved help from my parents, teachers, friends. But a lot of it was just because I for whatever reason was naturally smart from a very young age, and was given the tools to explore those gifts.

People who are smart enough to go to top Universities are generally going to do well in life. They're generally going to "win" the game. That doesn't mean that we have to leave behind the other massive amount of people to live in worse conditions and just say "Whelp, better luck next life".

I agree that to a certain extent the economic system is a game with a defined set of rules. My main problem right now is that the people who have the most nominal success in that game in terms of building wealth can now use their wealth to influence politicians and change the rules of the game in their favor. That's why I support Bernie because for 30 years he's been vocal about getting big money out of our political system and if nothing else I'd like a candidate who believes in that.

nath, zimmer, tut, et al,

what do you propose we do with the money we raise from taxing the rich at a higher rate?

what happens if the ultra rich leave the country?

how would you even go about taxing the ultra rich at a higher rate considering many of them pay lower rates than the people in the upper middle class given different tax situations?

This is possibly fair though I suspect you're giving me wayyyyyyy too much credit for being intelligent.

However, this doesn't address why "my" (I use quotes bc I am not in the upper tax bracket) money should be taxed at a higher rate than others should I become ultra-successful. Why could I not give my money away to family and friends from a similar background as me who don't make it in lieu of being taxed more (there is a good chance I never "make it" anyways and this is purely hypothetical)? Why can't I distribute money directly in the form of cash payments to other people in my own community in lieu of being taxed more? Why does "my" money have to go into a government bank account and then get spent on some project I may or may not support instead of being distributed directly to poor people in the form of cash payments. I'm ok with giving money to poor people, but I want to actually give it to poor people (and personally, I would want to give it all to kids as directly as possible) rather than giving it to government projects. If I hypothetically made $100mm in a year and the government wanted to tax me at 70% I would much prefer to pay 30% in taxes and spend $40mm on buying kids clothes, computers, and books and making sure they have a comfortable place to live and good food to eat.

I detest both political donations and lobbying, but to me thats a whole different issue than tax rates.

Not sure what you even mean or how you can conclude I don't care about the kids, I'm simply saying these parents don't care about their kids. No clue how you think I think it's a zero-sum game when I want the wealth of the world to grow not shrink. 2 Trillion dollars a year on Bombs and pensions are not something I wish to support, and it's causing large harm to the world but I MUST support it or I go to prison.

.

It's arbitrary because why do you care so much about the *relatively poor* people thousands of miles away from you while exploiting and ruining *truly poor* societies thousands of miles away from you.

Lol @ considering voting for someone/something to take wealth from people to be the "decent thing", and imply that those who don't pray to the holy federal government are bad, uncaring people who don't want to do the "decent thing". And yes people are arguing that I MUST do this, and I am questioning whether it's actually doing good.

Note how I'm actually doing things to help those worse off rather than simply encouraging people to vote a certain way while ignoring the realities of the political process and bureaucracy.



How am I insisting an only way? And what are you even claiming that I'm insisting? I've suggested far better federal policies that don't involve directly taking from producers and innovators and giving to bureaucrats.

Tax capital gains at a much higher rate than they currently are. There is no evidence that we need a low capital gains tax to "stimulate investment" our economy has plenty of investment dollars available. You may be taxed on capital gains up to your income of that year, or $200,000 (whichever is higher) at the rate your income was taxed. After that, all capital gains are taxed at 50% whether they be from domestic or foreign investments. Take it from people who are living off of the passive investments from their massive piles of wealth and not necessarily from people who are producing things and making income.

What to do with it: Basically the Bernie Plan. I think his college tuition ideas are farfetched and I would need to delve into his plans deeper to look at what can be improved, but I'd say Universal Single-Payer health care, repairing infrastructure (esp in poor areas where it has been neglected), and investing more in education in poor areas would be a good place to start.

ice up sons


horrific thread, what the **** was OP thinking

Because this just isn't a sustainable way to run a country. We elect officials who decide what to do with our tax dollars. They are supposed to use that in the way that has the greatest effect for as many people as possible. There are obviously inefficiencies in this system but we at least have the ability to elect new people if we don't like what they're doing. We can't run a country by letting rich people get rich then just decide for themselves how to allocate their resources back into the system. It would probably be marginally better than what we have now, of just ultra-rich people hoarding their massive wealth, but I'm pretty sure that the poor people who don't get helped by the CDL's of the world would be pretty quick to just get up and revolt under the system you're proposing.

What do you do about capital gains taxes for people who created the wealth there? I.e. Zuck will have huge capital gains anytime he sells FB shares but without him the whole company would never had existed and it has undeniably created wealth for lots of people and arguably also made the world a better place.

Then why not provide healthcare, education, food, military (though smaller than the current budget), infrastructure, and maybe shelter then use the rest of the money to simply cut checks to EVERYONE? That has to be a better system.

Zimmer,

Can you better explain what you mean by "hoarding their massive wealth"? Even if all they literally did(which they don't) is store it in a scrooge mcduck vault it still increases the purchasing value of the dollar, ducy? Attacking people for saving is silly, it has a net benefit to all people, if you want to attack the rich attack them using their power and wealth for self gain at the expense of others.

A wealth tax is a viable alternative option.

I don't see the big disagreement really. CDL would rather beef up resources and cut checks directly. Others want similar goals with slightly different means. Is the only disagreement really whether or not the rich should be taxed at a higher nominal rate as opposed to the implicit rate CDL supports?

As an aside, these issues will become exacerbated as our society becomes increasingly efficient and jobs become more scarce. There won't be peace or a society if income inequality continues to grow and the playing field gets perceived as more and more unfair. It's in the best interests of both the uber rich as well as society for a high floor, and we need to solve the "how do best do that" sooner rather than later.

paradox of thrift tho

no don't reply to me i'm never looking in this thread again

Thayer, you can PM me if you want to haggle over a rate. I've already given 6.5-1 against Trump.

I'm as anti-military spending as you, and am vehemently against our drone program and similar actions we have taken overseas post-Iraq (and I was against Iraq at the time). That all said, I don't think it's *necessarily* true that our military approach has done the world net negative harm. I think there is a very viable argument that the threat of the US has kept some nations in check and ultimately has resulted in a safer, more peaceful world (and it's been a history of unprecedented peace). I'm not sure, but it's an interesting thought exercise. Metagame issues can't be disregarded.

#TeamCutTheCheck

smartphones are essential for poor people -- especially in other countries. Banking, health services, education etc are all done through smart phones. Over half of internet users in Africa only access the internet via smartphone.

I agree that smartphones and access to the internet can greatly improve the quality of people's lives, particularly the poorest. We are heading towards a future where smartphones and the internet will essentially cost nothing, and it's best if we can capitalize that knowledge in ways that can better improves people's lives and futures. I even proposed something in the FAQ awhile ago of an app based TeachIt program for free learning of trades, something I continue to look into implementing. This has nothing to do with "necessity" and "essential" however. It is an innovation that greatly improves people's lives, particularly relatively to the poor, but that doesn't mean it's necessary it just means it's a great idea. My comments regarding superficial demands for pleasure have to do with the "need" for constant newer and better while not properly assuming the environmental costs of it while using slave labor to do so.

The environmental impact on smartphones is enormous. The amount of power and natural resources wasted is absurd, and quite often simply thrown away far too soon. Phones typically have a 5+year life to it and USA#1 averages a 1 year lifespan to it in which they are then put into landfills that are poisoning the earth.

Start off with funding everything as is and allowing complete tax cuts of everyone's first 100k.

After this, calculate how much health insurance premium is paid each year and instead use that money for a single payer system. Tax rich, print money, and cut defense spending for any shortfall.

There I just solved America's problems in like 5 mintues

Actually there probably wouldn't even be much shortfall. You can use the defense cutting on fixing schools.

How much money would you like to spend per student in, say, Newark?

Public education is a joke, pensions are a joke. The entire system is a joke and a lot of the best teachers get fed up with it and get out while the worst teachers truly harm the future of our society while they become set for life. Literally giving people money that they must spend on schooling while also allowing any extra spending on schooling to be completely tax deductible would be a fine idea. What we need to do is improve the costs while increasing accountability. That is something that happens when people are given choices, not by "spending more money on education".

I'd prefer that spending go to parents who can then choose their schooling opposed to being used to finance political careers.