The problem is a bit more complex than this. Our society has cultivated a lower class which loves to complain but is far too distracted with their xboxes, mcdonalds, nascars, and other drivel to really band together in a cohesive way. Only through education can the ants rise up and effect REAL change. Having a leader (of whatever party) get up there and spout platitudes about "change" or "values" or whatever other bullshit our politicians are trying to sell us isn't going to really change anything. As long as the lowest common denominator of greed on both a high and low scale drives our motives, we aren't going to really move forward.

If the democrats, the republicans or the extremists on both sides want to really change anything, invest in education. Period. Then this obese lazy country will get off their couches and out of the buffet line and start thinking about what really needs to happen in this country to take us to the next level.

@ShakaUVM: "How? If all the poor suddenly earned $60k a year in constant dollars and could afford all the health care, food, and whatever else they wanted, do you think there's going to be "social consequences" because Warren Buffet and his friends made an extra billion that year? No, there wouldn't be."

Most people won't get mad if one person is richer than them and can have golden toilets and they have "whatever else they want" (which is ridiculous - we're imagining a place where people have all they want?). Though, to be fair, some will. Some people will be (and are) mad that someone is making a billion dollars, especially if they don't do much work.

More generally, imagine the opposite ridiculous analogy. Imagine a situation where nobody can afford food. Later, 40% of the population (say, ones with blue eyes) can afford food while everyone else gets only a modest increase in income. Do you think the green eyes are going to be happy because, oh well, they're making as much as they did before? Of course not. They're going to see themselves as getting poorer while the blue eyes are getting richer, and they're going to be mad and want to steal food.

There's factors involved in how this plays out - very important ones are:

1. How significant are the amenities one class gets that the other doesn't (obviously food, housing, electricity are going to make more of a pinch than "rich people drive nicer cars").
2. Does the division of wealth feel arbitrary and permanent? Do people feel like they might one day move into the richer class? Do they feel the rich have "earned" their position?
3. How does the population break down? Is there small percentages of outliers, or is there a clear division between haves and have-nots?

So yeah, it's not simple (and wouldn't happen in magic world where people have everything they want and where prices for goods didn't change relative to each other), but it's not a non-existent problem. I don't think the US is close to serious social problems, but with a little prodding it could be and "revolution" isn't the first step. There's also "tipping points" that may come up. For example, if poor people begin to generally feel like a "good education" (the kind that gets a job, which at times raises in price much faster than CPI) is only possible for rich people, that's going to be bad. Right now there's a sense that anyone can work hard and progress - if that feeling evaporates you're going to get more labor unrest and support for radical populist politicians.

Don't think that could happen? Look at history.

@raverman: "The inequality of distribution of wealth has to be fixed INSIDE the corporations remuneration for effort."

If I found a corporation, and never go public, why should you have any right to the profits of the corporation, other than the normal payment of taxes?

What, will you forcefully nationalize my corporation and take it away from me, to give it to the workers? There's a name for that.

@jmzero: "As such, it's perfectly possible to think of the "poor getting poorer" if their relative income isn't growing as fast as others' incomes... the gap in income can still have social consequences."

How? If all the poor suddenly earned $60k a year in constant dollars and could afford all the health care, food, and whatever else they wanted, do you think there's going to be "social consequences" because Warren Buffet and his friends made an extra billion that year?

No, there wouldn't be.

You have to both look at the percentage of the pie each income quintile is taking, but also the size of the pie. Economics is not a zero-sum game, which is a mistake most of the people make when talking about income inequality.

>> ^EMPIRE:
oh... so the crash is an opportunity for assholes like this to make a buck.


What he says is that anyone can make money during a crash; and this is true. The problem is that when markets plummet, people see no end in sight. So they panic sell and then turn paper losses into real losses and further precipitate the downturn. I've seen it happen so many times it boggles my mind.

I think Warren Buffet said it best: people will buy anything on sale except for stocks.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Exactly. He's shorting the market and hoping to influence it through this. He's getting good bang for his buck due to the virality of this video too.

Still, when the stock market crashes - I think ooohh, Wallstreet is having a clearance sale! Warren Buffet's axiom holds true: Be afraid when people are greedy. Be greedy when people are afraid.

(not that I have a single red cent directly invested in the stock market, just saying)

>> ^EMPIRE:

oh... so the crash is an opportunity for assholes like this to make a buck. He actually said he dreams of another recession. WHAT a HUGE fucking piece of shit. It's horrible people like this asshole who created this mess.

Buffet's very strange tax argument...

And some background.

I checked your statement, Warren Buffett Salary is a fixed $100,000/year. It's been that salary forever. He should be paying very little taxes at that bracket compared to his actual income.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^quantumushroom:
The 'factory owner' paid for all those tax-paid services (military, police, fire protection, roads) at a higher rate than the average taxpayer.
No, he didn't. Capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes.
For average taxpayers, payroll tax is the biggest share of their tax burden, followed by sales tax, followed by income tax.
For the wealthy, their tax burden is mostly split between income tax and capital gains, and since capital gains is significantly lower than income tax, they do their best to rearrange their income so it comes in as capital gains.
That's how Warren Buffet's secretary winds up paying a higher effective rate than Warren Buffet.

1) i'd like to know what unskilled labor jobs the government pays 100k/yr

I'm happy to expand your mind.

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/overpaid-federal-workers

Keep in mind that the bulk of these jobs are make-work jobs and bureaucrats who serve no function except to warm a chair and internacinely war for budget share of the federal pie. There's tons more. Teacher union administrators, the construction worker supervisor who stands around 90% of the day, and on and on and on. Even a cursory google search will bag you thousands on thousands of federal and state employees that are unskilled, overpaid leeches on the economy.

2) the solvency of pensions/health care is quite well documented

Supply the data proving that. The Postal Service is due to collapse in November because it can't pay its operating costs AND keep up the retirement benefits of its retirees. Social Security isn't solvent. Medicare isn't solvent. Medicaid isn't solvent. The benefit programs of federal employees is banked entirely on debt spending. "Solvency" is when the program is in the black.

i know you've been led to believe that only private business could figure out a way to make it work, but who instituted these services in the first place?

Private companies. Long before 'government' ever came along, private individuals performed these tasks for money or goods. Government apes private companies - not the other way around. And 99 times out of 100, government does a lousy job at them because they don't operate logically. Case in point...

the education thing just BLOWS my mind

Yes - I have no difficulty believing that a person steeped in leftist theory would have a hard time understanding the concept that education can take place quite easily and well without government subsidies. The best colleges are private, and people who go to private shools (or are homeschooled) do just as well (or better) than students in public schools. And our public schools do such a good job, don't they? Regardless, I don't have a problem with government providing a "School". I have a problem with government meddling in cirriculum, and the associated teacher's union. Have the government provide the 'school', and then get out of the way.

its CLASS WARFARE when the victim speaks up and demands justice

First - there's no victim here. Second, it is class warfare when pinheads like Obama and his supporters talk out both sides of their mouths, lie, and deceive on this issue. Buffet didn't pay 'less than his secretary' on his income - he paid MORE - but he and Obama are lying and equating capital gains as income as a means to raise taxes NOT on "millionaires", but on the middle class. THAT is class warfare.

"Bailing out the rich". Pht - what a crock. Obumma is only wanting to bail out government, which has overspent and overpromised and he wants to sock it to the middle class. If he was serious then he's freeze all government spending today to 2011 levels and keep them there until the system was in the black. Then he'd pass a balanced budget ammendment and everyone would praise him as the greatest president ever. But no - he's a leftist idiot and all he wants is to raise taxes in a recession - which even he said was a stupid thing to do. Stupid is as stupid does - and the stupid people that agree with it.

Nice thumbnail pic. Seems somebody has an obsession.. it just gets under your skin he's not a fraud like your political heroes, huh?

You do realize that being a millionaire and having yearly income of $1 Mil are two different things right?

Wasn't Buffet's argument that he pays less taxes than his secretary because he doesn't have "income"? He only pays a capital gains tax of 15%? lolz So who's the clueless jackass that came up with the name "Buffet Rule" for a tax on high income earners?

And why the arbitrary number $1 Million? Why not $500k, or $50k? Does it really matter anyway? The Income tax was passed using wealth envy propaganda (pay their "fair share"). It originally started out only taxing the top 1% of income earners. But it quickly expanded once the government had their foot in the door (or hands in our wallets). There wouldn't be a need for income tax if we didn't still have to pay interest on money we borrowed that was created from nothing almost a century ago. Of course we can't pay off that false debt, because it's physically impossible.

What's even more fucked up about this whole thing is the ultra rich are always going to be given exceptions, rebates, loopholes, tax shelters, etc. Taxing "millionaires" is taxing small business owners that file their business gross income on their personal income returns. It completely ignores the criminals that have already made millions on Wall street through fraud and collusion. And it gives a pass to the crooks that are doing that now.

What if we actually did something constructive like list the millionaire politicians who REFUSE to prosecute Wall Street fraud. Isn't that the real reason we are here? Is taxing "millionaires" going to fix the problem?

The government has made it official policy not to prosecute fraud, and instead to do everything necessary to cover up for Wall Street.


William K. Black: This is the greatest financial crime in the history of the world and no one senior, at any of the major places that drove the crisis, has gone to jail?
...
Unless something dramatic or radical changes, this is going to be the greatest case of elite fraud with impunity in the history of the world. And it is only going to change if we express our outrage as the people and demand that it is changed.

Top 1% pays 22.7% of Federal taxes and have 17% of the income. The bottom 90% pay 47.8% with 59.8% of all income. Those numbers are based on verifiable fact

So? Rejigger and you can say, "The bottom 75% pay 32% of the taxes with 45.7% of all income. Any way you slice it, the 'wealthy' are paying the lion's share of the taxes, with a smaller percentage of the nation's total wealth. The rich are paying their fair share and then some.

It has always been that way and I defy you to find a time and place in history when things worked differently

First things first. Your entire premise is wrong. The Bush tax cuts were not "Tax cuts for the rich". They were tax cust for EVERYONE. It is only the neoliberal spin echo-chamber, zombie brains of leftists that calls them 'tax cuts for the rich'. Any sensible, fair analysis proves conclusively that the 'rich' ended up paying an even HIGHER percentage of the tax burden after the Bush cuts. THe only way any person can possibly believe they were 'for the rich' is if they turn their brains off, become absolute simpletons, and look ONLY at the total dollars rather than at the whole picture of what happened.

You guys on the left are going to have to face some reality at some point. Any tax 'cut' is going to overwhelmingly favor 'the rich' because they are the ones paying the taxes. The poor and middle class are either paying zero taxes, or get a tax refund every year.

You neolibs aren't targeting the 'rich'. You are targeting the upper-middle class. Yeah - REAL "progessive" of you jerks to go along with Obama's marxist rhetoric and try to kneecap folks that earn a piddly 200,000 a year. Oooo - yeah - those are "rich guys" who "aren't paying their fair share". You guys are a bunch of jackhats, you know that? Those 200K a year guys are small business owners who live paycheck to paycheck just as much as the poor do.

And Obama and Buffet are total @$$es for lying to the entire country and trying to pass off capital gains as if it was the same thing as income. Really, just goes to show how much neolibs have to warp reality in order to try to sucker the stupid and the intellectually weak. It is to Videosift's complete and utter shame that it has such high percentage of dupes who are so easily manipulated by lies and class warfare rhetoric.

>> ^quantumushroom:

The 'factory owner' paid for all those tax-paid services (military, police, fire protection, roads) at a higher rate than the average taxpayer.

No, he didn't. Capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes.

For average taxpayers, payroll tax is the biggest share of their tax burden, followed by sales tax, followed by income tax.

For the wealthy, their tax burden is mostly split between income tax and capital gains, and since capital gains is significantly lower than income tax, they do their best to rearrange their income so it comes in as capital gains.

That's how Warren Buffet's secretary winds up paying a higher effective rate than Warren Buffet.

>> ^LukinStone:

Why is it morally justified to impose a higher tax rate on the more highly paid? I'm already paying twenty people's worth.. Why should it be more?
It's moral because "you" can still afford gold plated rocket cars with a higher tax rate.
Or, if you believe in Jebus, there's that whole thing about a camel going through the eye of a needle.

If you make that much more money you are doing it at the expense of the people who make less! Is that moral? What makes your life so much more valuable than someone else's life?


You are standing on the backs of many others but you don't want to strengthen the base of the pyramid, you want to make the top heavier while weakening the base. That kind of thinking will end badly for everyone.

-Karl

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@NetRunner There is nothing intrinsically morally good about pleasure,

Right, but depriving people of pleasure, or inflicting pain on people seems to immediately become a question of morality, does it not?
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
My chief concern isn't that you have to be considerate, it is that you are considering something you can can't measure, legally. How many broken arms does it take to equal a murder? How many indecent exposures are equal to a hate crime?


Again, I don't really see that as an issue. I don't have a hard and fast rule that would be able to tell me how many broken arms equal a murder, but it seems pretty reasonable to state that there is a finite number where it would make sense, wouldn't it? Surely repetitive violent assaults would eventually earn you the same punishment as a murder as it stands now.

In any case, it's a heuristic for arriving at moral assesments, it's not meant to be a formal criminal justice system in its own right.

That said, why is breaking an arm a lesser charge than murder in the first place? Seems perfectly clear why if you look at it with a utilitarian eye, but it seems less clear if you believe that morality is entirely derived from some sequence of categorical imperatives.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

People can be unhappy for valid and invalid reasons. Happiness is an emotion. Happiness isn't rational. Happiness is related directly to what makes us animals, not humans. Happiness has no proper gauge, it has no measure, it has no quantifiable meaning outside of personal subjective experience. Something that makes one person sad, makes another happy. Some people like being mad, which makes others unhappy, which makes some people happy. Happy is a useless idea for basing moral arguments. I am staring to hold that Aspergers is the next stage needed in humans to put aside these silly emotional states that tie us to animal notions of morality. If we want to be better than pigs and rats, then happy needs to die, and soon.


And yet pain and pleasure are at the core of how we experience the world. We can try to pretend we're not connected to the world of animals, but we are.

Oh, and for sure, in a society built on glorifying selfishness, disconnectedness, and individualism as an end in and of itself, evolution is pushing us all ever closer to a race of total psychopaths.

You know, the ultimate moral creatures. Totally unhindered by any such animal emotions, like empathy, sympathy, compassion, honesty, loyalty, etc. Obsolete concepts that only those bestial liberals keep pushing, as if there was any moral worth in guaranteeing people a right to the pursuit of happiness...

Also, if your chief complaint about utilitarianism is that following it requires you to actually think about the consequences your actions will have on other people, and never provides any totally clear answers even then, you might want to think about whether that's really bug and not a feature.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
More happiness isn't a moral argument. It might make more people happy to have capital punishment, but that isn't a moral justification. So do go on and on.
Capital punishment doesn't make people happy, and a society that inflicts it on people who are sometimes completely innocent makes people really unhappy.
As for "happiness isn't a moral argument", the right way to think of it is "how is it moral to arrange society so that vast classes of people are unhappy?"
Maybe you have an answer for that, maybe you don't, but it's not an invalid moral question to raise.


People can be unhappy for valid and invalid reasons. Happiness is an emotion. Happiness isn't rational. Happiness is related directly to what makes us animals, not humans. Happiness has no proper gauge, it has no measure, it has no quantifiable meaning outside of personal subjective experience. Something that makes one person sad, makes another happy. Some people like being mad, which makes others unhappy, which makes some people happy. Happy is a useless idea for basing moral arguments. I am staring to hold that Aspergers is the next stage needed in humans to put aside these silly emotional states that tie us to animal notions of morality. If we want to be better than pigs and rats, then happy needs to die, and soon.