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Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, August 15th, 2011 3:10pm PDT - promote requested by Hybrid.

Everyone listen to the rich man!

You should read the NY Times article. He is truly remarkable patriot.

One of the few ultra-rich who made it there without being crummy to other people.

Among the investment barons, he is one of the few saints.

PAT BUCHANAN: Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion.

What's Warren Buffoon waiting for? A gun in his face like the rest of us get?

^Here it comes...

How about the fact of the wisdom of crowds. A well proven scientific concept. The masses will make better decisions overall in the economy than the few. We will have a better more stable economy simply by having less money in the hands of the few and more money in the hands of the many.

-karl

PS. this goes for salaries too. I have seen several different economists point out that too much or too little stratification of wealth is inefficient for any economy and right now the difference between the rich and poor is off the charts.

PPS. Personally I would point out that any head of a corporation that makes huge sums of money cannot be a good business man because any good business man would realize that the company could be better by spending that money on the business itself. Taking more money than you need to lead a reasonably comfortable life means that you are actually bad at business and shouldn't be running any company. Taking 10million for yourself rather than raising the salaries of 10,000 people by 1000 dollars is a bad business decision which should preclude you from running a company.

this is what we've been trying to tell you QM, the system doesn't work when only a few contribute...the system works when ALL contribute based on what they can afford. By definition, the rich can afford to lose more to taxes and still continue to be richer than any of us will dream of.

We can't sustain our system without a progressive tax system. Fair tax is a scam designed to offload the tax burden away from the rich, anything BUT fair.

If corporations are people, then so is gov't. by the people for the people...not just select people.

And yes, I'm willing to make some massive cuts..but cuts alone can't do it. Even Reps know this but they are playing politics as usual. They knew damn well they were going to raise the debt limit...they HAD to, but they played a game of chicken with the american economy in order to suck Grover Norquist's cock....Hope you're proud of yourself. Voters will certainly remember this in 2012

At least you've stopped arguing against the obvious truth that we need to raise taxes on the rich...

>> ^quantumushroom:

PAT BUCHANAN: Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion.
What's Warren Buffoon waiting for? A gun in his face like the rest of us get?

*cough*
Fortune reports that Buffett will donate 85 percent of his fortune amassed from stock in the Berkshire Hathaway company to five foundations.

The donations, which will come from Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway shares, would amount to about $37 billion, based on current values.

Five-sixths of the money reportedly will go to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which specializes in finding cures for diseases that plague impoverished nations. [source=abc news]

*cough*

>> ^quantumushroom:

PAT BUCHANAN: Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion.
What's Warren Buffoon waiting for? A gun in his face like the rest of us get?

I also like the fact that his children know they will not be getting his wealth after he dies. He has said the the worst thing you could do to a person is give them a huge pile of money.

Post cannot be self promoted by original submitter MycroftHomlz because MycroftHomlz does not have enough Power Points. (You can always purchase more Power Points.)

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?

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.

Because the economy works better for everyone, even you, when that's done an appropriate amount. How much more is debatable, but the basic principle still true regardless.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

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?

this is what we've been trying to tell you QM, the system doesn't work when only a few contribute...the system works when ALL contribute based on what they can afford.

I totally agree, so why does the bottom 50% of Americans pay NO income tax? The wealthy already pay a disproportionately high percentage of all taxes and I have yet to find a liberalsifter who admits this.

I well understand that Scrooge McDuck won't miss a few more shovelfuls of gold coins swiped by federal bulldozers, but lets review reality:

1) The "extra" money attained by "soaking" Scrooge and Rich Uncle Pennybags (from the Monopoly game) will be pi$$ed away, like the 60 billion dollars EVERY YEAR lost to fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid/Medicare. The federal mafia is composed of sh1tty stewards of our money.

2) The Hawaiian Dunce has spent 3 trillion in 3 years with little or nothing to show for it. So what magical number of dollars is going to make everything all right? A quadrillion?

3) When the socialists raise taxes, the wealthy of 2011 have their accountant press a few buttons on their computating machines, sending their $$$ overseas, invested in more stable markets. Apparently many already have, probably the moment they knew Obama was elected.

4) Liberal say, "Rich man not know difference he still rich." But there's now less money to invest and less money to create jobs. Now some liberalsifter will say, "This graph indicates that the rich don't create jobs with their ill-gotten gains."

BUT, if you're honest with yourselves, you'll know that one million dollars has a much better chance of creating jobs in the hands of entrepreneurs and investors than the government "Department of Creating Jobs" which probably spends that much just on office furniture.

5) The debt limit 'debate' is total BS, always has been. Here is what happened: taxocrats burned through tax money at an alarming rate and there weren't enough elected Republicans to stop them. THAT'S why Moody's got scared and US was downgraded. Republicans can't communicate for sh1t anyway, and so the socialists and their media lapdogs managed to blame the right for this mess.

6) Warren Buffoon likes to be liked, I get that, but he should still STFU and make a real gesture. Giving a symbolic billion dollars to the federal mafia should do it. He won't miss it.

I like how herobozo can praise a billionaire like Warren Buffoon. What a refreshing change!

Had Buffoon said any other thing than his current socialist gibberish, hero and friends would demand Buffoon be hung from a lamppost just like all the other evil billionaires. (Yeah, I can link too)


>> ^heropsycho:

I like how qm called Buffet a baffoon. Spot on. It would be different if Buffet were like some economic, investing super-genius. Like he's the most successful investor in the US, psssshhh...
http://verydemotivational.files.wordpres
s.com/2011/03/demotivational-posters-cant-tell-if-trolling.jpg

I knew it was only a matter of time before you'd call me a socialist. That of course makes me a communist, since socialism and communism according to you are the same thing. ROFL...

So in short, everyone even remotely to the left of qm is a communist apparently.

>> ^quantumushroom:

I like how herobozo can praise a billionaire like Warren Buffoon. What a refreshing change!
Had Buffoon said any other thing than his current socialist gibberish, hero and friends would demand Buffoon be hung from a lamppost just like all the other evil billionaires. (Yeah, I can link too)

>> ^heropsycho:
I like how qm called Buffet a baffoon. Spot on. It would be different if Buffet were like some economic, investing super-genius. Like he's the most successful investor in the US, psssshhh...
http://verydemotivational.files.wordpres
s.com/2011/03/demotivational-posters-cant-tell-if-trolling.jpg

That isn't a moral counter argument. It might be better for economy to have a dictator, but the pressures of commerce shouldn't drive morality, less you get us into our current economic crisis. Economics shouldn't be the founding principal for justification, unless your Ferengi.

>> ^heropsycho:

Because the economy works better for everyone, even you, when that's done an appropriate amount. How much more is debatable, but the basic principle still true regardless.
>> ^pyloricvalve:
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?

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise. And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.

Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.

Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked. We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.

This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.

Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall. Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable. The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for that kind of claim whatsoever.

>> ^quantumushroom:

this is what we've been trying to tell you QM, the system doesn't work when only a few contribute...the system works when ALL contribute based on what they can afford.
I totally agree, so why does the bottom 50% of Americans pay NO income tax? The wealthy already pay a disproportionately high percentage of all taxes and I have yet to find a liberalsifter who admits this.
I well understand that Scrooge McDuck won't miss a few more shovelfuls of gold coins swiped by federal bulldozers, but lets review reality:
1) The "extra" money attained by "soaking" Scrooge and Rich Uncle Pennybags (from the Monopoly game) will be pi$$ed away, like the 60 billion dollars EVERY YEAR lost to fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid/Medicare. The federal mafia is composed of sh1tty stewards of our money.
2) The Hawaiian Dunce has spent 3 trillion in 3 years with little or nothing to show for it. So what magical number of dollars is going to make everything all right? A quadrillion?
3) When the socialists raise taxes, the wealthy of 2011 have their accountant press a few buttons on their computating machines, sending their $$$ overseas, invested in more stable markets. Apparently many already have, probably the moment they knew Obama was elected.
4) Liberal say, "Rich man not know difference he still rich." But there's now less money to invest and less money to create jobs. Now some liberalsifter will say, "This graph indicates that the rich don't create jobs with their ill-gotten gains."
BUT, if you're honest with yourselves, you'll know that one million dollars has a much better chance of creating jobs in the hands of entrepreneurs and investors than the government "Department of Creating Jobs" which probably spends that much just on office furniture.
5) The debt limit 'debate' is total BS, always has been. Here is what happened: taxocrats burned through tax money at an alarming rate and there weren't enough elected Republicans to stop them. THAT'S why Moody's got scared and US was downgraded. Republicans can't communicate for sh1t anyway, and so the socialists and their media lapdogs managed to blame the right for this mess.
6) Warren Buffoon likes to be liked, I get that, but he should still STFU and make a real gesture. Giving a symbolic billion dollars to the federal mafia should do it. He won't miss it.

I think his beef is really with the capital gains tax and other loopholes for the superdupermegarich.

>> ^heropsycho:

I like how qm called Buffet a baffoon. Spot on. It would be different if Buffet were like some economic, investing super-genius. Like he's the most successful investor in the US, psssshhh...
http://verydemotivational.files.wordpres
s.com/2011/03/demotivational-posters-cant-tell-if-trolling.jpg


Investing is 20% skill, 70% luck, and 10% understanding how to play the system. So yes, much like other investors, myself included who've made money hand over fist. He is a buffoon, a lucky one, but still a buffoon.

Here you go Warren...

http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html

Now you can freely donate as much of your money to the Federal Government as you please.

What's that? You haven't been doing it? In fact, you've been using every tax loophole, shelter, and economic trick in the book to AVOID paying taxes? naNIIIII?

Oh - that's right - you're a smart investor and you know giving money to the Feds is a terrible investment, just like Moody's, the S&P, and every other financial instutution on the planet is saying.

This isn't hard folks. Let's wave a magic wand. POOF! Every neolib fantasy has now come true. We've cut defense spending to only 4% of the budget like every other Euro nation. POOF! The federal government now confiscates 80% of all 'wealth' from every single company, corporation, financial institution, or person who has material goods or cash that exceeds $250,000. What exactly do you think is going to happen?

Any living being with a nervous system knows exactly what will happen. All that money will sluice like so much sewage into Washington, where it will completely dissappear. Poverty will not improve. Wealth disparity will not magically 'reallocate'. Health care will not suddenly become 'free'. Education will not improve. Hunger will not go away. The only thing that will have happened is that PEOPLE will have less freedom.

Buffett has no credibility because he's not doing what he's advocating. There's nothing stopping him from taking every penny he's got and giving it to the Feds. The fact that he hasn't done so proves only one thing... He knows enough to NOT sink his money into a terrible investment.

Warren Buffet is saying that people who make more than a $1000K a year need to pay more than 15%. He advocates returning to the Clinton tax rates. And he thinks that job creation occurs when the rich are taxed and the middle class is supported by a lower tax rate.

You should read his NY Times article. It is really easy to fall into the trap of believe the philosophy of trickle down economics, but as Warren says the facts have never born this out. The truth is the economy grows more when the middle class (incomes less than $500K) are taxed at a lower rate than the upper class (greater than $500K). Buffet believes that there should be two or three more levels to the tax code and that capital gains taxes should be graduated to appropriately tax the super rich who make money with money.

Like him or not, Clinton's economic policies navigated our country to tremendous economic prosperity. We need to tax the rich. It is our only hope along with leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. Two wars were never economically sustainable. Sometimes doing the right thing means doing something unpleasant.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

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?

Here are the current tax brackets.

10% Bracket $0 – $8,500
15% Bracket $8,500 – $34,500
25% Bracket $34,500 – $83,600
28% Bracket $83,600 – $174,400
33% Bracket $174,400 – $379,150
35% Bracket $379,150

I think Buffet wants something like this,

10% Bracket $0 – $8,500
15% Bracket $8,500 – $34,500
20% Bracket $34,500 – $83,600
25% Bracket $83,600 – $174,400
30% Bracket $174,400 – $379,150
35% Bracket $379,150
40% Bracket $600,000
45% Bracket $1,000,000

Except everyone is happier, everyone has more freedom, everyone is subjected to less crime, everyone's businesses are better off... I could go on and on.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

That isn't a moral counter argument. It might be better for economy to have a dictator, but the pressures of commerce shouldn't drive morality, less you get us into our current economic crisis. Economics shouldn't be the founding principal for justification, unless your Ferengi.
>> ^heropsycho:
Because the economy works better for everyone, even you, when that's done an appropriate amount. How much more is debatable, but the basic principle still true regardless.
>> ^pyloricvalve:
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?

I'd buy your argument if it weren't for the fact that he's been so repeatedly successful over decades of investing. There's luck in everything, but consistent results over that long of time isn't luck.

>> ^Mashiki:

>> ^heropsycho:
I like how qm called Buffet a baffoon. Spot on. It would be different if Buffet were like some economic, investing super-genius. Like he's the most successful investor in the US, psssshhh...
http://verydemotivational.files.wordpres
s.com/2011/03/demotivational-posters-cant-tell-if-trolling.jpg

Investing is 20% skill, 70% luck, and 10% understanding how to play the system. So yes, much like other investors, myself included who've made money hand over fist. He is a buffoon, a lucky one, but still a buffoon.

Dude, nobody in this thread is advocating a tax rate of 80%. Why do you and qm keep claiming the choice is pure communism or capitalism, when there's a middle ground, one that is more capitalist than socialist? Why must the tax rates be 35% or less for everyone, or 80% on everyone, or just the rich?

That's not who you call "neolibs" are advocating. That's not what I am advocating.

It's a BS false choice between two polar opposites.

Why is a moderate increase on tax rates paramount to pure socialism and gov't control on the economy.

IT'S NOT! Stop misrepresenting what is being suggested by sensible moderates.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Here you go Warren...
http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html
Now you can freely donate as much of your money to the Federal Government as you please.
What's that? You haven't been doing it? In fact, you've been using every tax loophole, shelter, and economic trick in the book to AVOID paying taxes? naNIIIII?
Oh - that's right - you're a smart investor and you know giving money to the Feds is a terrible investment, just like Moody's, the S&P, and every other financial instutution on the planet is saying.
This isn't hard folks. Let's wave a magic wand. POOF! Every neolib fantasy has now come true. We've cut defense spending to only 4% of the budget like every other Euro nation. POOF! The federal government now confiscates 80% of all 'wealth' from every single company, corporation, financial institution, or person who has material goods or cash that exceeds $250,000. What exactly do you think is going to happen?
Any living being with a nervous system knows exactly what will happen. All that money will sluice like so much sewage into Washington, where it will completely dissappear. Poverty will not improve. Wealth disparity will not magically 'reallocate'. Health care will not suddenly become 'free'. Education will not improve. Hunger will not go away. The only thing that will have happened is that PEOPLE will have less freedom.
Buffett has no credibility because he's not doing what he's advocating. There's nothing stopping him from taking every penny he's got and giving it to the Feds. The fact that he hasn't done so proves only one thing... He knows enough to NOT sink his money into a terrible investment.

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.

>> ^heropsycho:

Except everyone is happier, everyone has more freedom, everyone is subjected to less crime, everyone's businesses are better off... I could go on and on.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
That isn't a moral counter argument. It might be better for economy to have a dictator, but the pressures of commerce shouldn't drive morality, less you get us into our current economic crisis. Economics shouldn't be the founding principal for justification, unless your Ferengi.
>> ^heropsycho:
Because the economy works better for everyone, even you, when that's done an appropriate amount. How much more is debatable, but the basic principle still true regardless.
>> ^pyloricvalve:
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?

Is one's political philosophy an inner "moral code" or is it a function of where you sit on the economic ladder? Is it coincidence that the wealthy are conservative and largely Republican and the poor are largely liberal and Democratic? If you reversed the economic standing of a group of one versus the other, would that change their political view? Do the poor who win lotteries usually go a spending spree or immediately set about philanthropy and working for social justice? How far down the economic ladder does entitlement stop? If we are a truly a world community, should the US citizen living at the poverty level give up their cell phone so that a child can eat in Rwanda? After all, isn't that person at the US poverty level still earning in the top 10% of world income earners? Isn't that person uber-rich to the child in Rwanda? The group on the bottom will always look up at the next class above and think they're "greedy" for their excesses, however modest they may be. In the end, the world economy is driven by individuals pursuing their personal and separate interests. To paraphrase historian Will Durant on what lessons we learn from history, concerning economics, "freedom and equality are sworn enemies.......the greater the freedom, the greater the economic disparity in the classes, until it creates such tension that wealth is redistributed by legislation, or poverty is redistributed by revolution."

Oops, forget it.

Amazing to see the number of super wealthy that are pledging to spend the majority of their fortune on philanthropy.....http://givingpledge.org/#enter
You can make a personal donation to pay off the US National Debt, if you so desire.....http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2009/11/10/n_mos_debt.cnnmoney/

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It is really easy to fall into the trap of believe the philosophy of trickle down economics, but as Warren says the facts have never born this out.

Every time taxes are cut, it results in an increase in tax revenues because it increases personal wealth, which creates more tax payers, and establishes an environment that gives the private sector confidence. Carter’s 70% top marginal tax rates and leftist liberal policies brought the nation to fiscal collapse. Buffett has it 100% backwards. Taxes cut. Tax revenues up. It works every time. That’s why even OBAMA didn’t want to end the Bush tax cuts – because he himself admitted it would hurt the economy in December 2010. Neolibs like to ignore that particular bit of Obama rhetoric - but I do not forget such things...

Buffet believes that there should be two or three more levels to the tax code and that capital gains taxes should be graduated to appropriately tax the super rich who make money with money.

The problem is not that there isn’t a bigger tax category at the top. We’ve had a rate as high as 94% back in 1944. It was 70% under Carter. The problem is a labyrinthine tax code that people can game by moving money & assets around. We just need to simplify the code to eliminate the exemptions for businesses and the ‘money’ rich. There’s no need for a new, higher top marginal tax rate. The ‘rich’ already pay the bulk of our taxes.

Like him or not, Clinton's economic policies navigated our country to tremendous economic prosperity.

No. Clinton was nothing a serviceable – but barnacle-covered – rudder. He didn’t screw up what was already going well. That isn’t great praise, but it still makes him a better CiC than Bush2 or Obama. Bush1 was the guy that raised the taxes. Clinton merely coasted along on the dot-com bubble. Oh, and also the Republican “Contact with America” was forced down Clinton’s throat. And he had a few impeachable offenses that prevented him from pushing more spending. The GOP cut spending, which created an environment friendly for the business community to create prosperity. You can thank fiscal conservatives for the 90s and early 00s – not Clinton.

Sometimes doing the right thing means doing something unpleasant.

Yes – cutting big-government social spending in favor of small-government freedom-oriented systems is seen as unpleasant, but it is the right thing to do.

Dude, nobody in this thread is advocating a tax rate of 80% … Why is a moderate increase on tax rates paramount to pure socialism and gov't control on the economy?

I wryly notice that the actual QUESTION I posed remains stubbornly ignored. What would happen IF (!IF!) the tax rate at the top went to 70% ala Carter? Or 94% ala Roosevelt? Would the problems be solved? I think even the most dyed-in-the-wool neolib knows deep down in their reluctant-to-admit souls that high top marginal tax rates do not solve anything. Even a 100% tax rate does not come within 16.9 trillion (heh) miles of the real problem. Every thin dime of the new taxes would just vanish into a black hole, and the debt/deficit would not be touched except in name. We have precedence for this conclusion.

Tax hikes take place immediately, but the spending cuts are always pushed 10 years into the future where they disappear. Our tax rates are already high enough. Our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. The issue is the huge amount of SPENDING taking place.

I hope this simple explanation helps all the neolibs out… Our current debt is 16.9 trillion dollars.

1. A simple federal budget freeze on spending to current 2011 levels would cut our debt by 10 trillion in 10 years.
2. Increasing the top marginal tax rate to 100% would cut the debt by 2 trillion in 10 years

Simple freeze? 10 trillion. A ridiculous 100% tax rate? Only 2 trillion. Where does that tell you the real problem lies? Fussing with tax rates at the top is nothing but rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The iceberg is spending.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'rich, taxes, increase' to 'rich, taxes, increase, warren buffet, this week, wealthy' - edited by xxovercastxx

*politics *talks

Adding video to channels (Politics, Talks) - requested by xxovercastxx.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Clinton was nothing a serviceable – but barnacle-covered – rudder. He didn’t screw up what was already going well. [...] Bush1 was the guy that raised the taxes.

It looks like you just said Clinton's presidency was a success because Bush raised taxes and Clinton reaped the benefits. But obviously there are no benefits to raising taxes, so that couldn't have been what you meant.

I agree about simplifying the tax code. The system is overcomplicated and it leads to tax fraud and/or loopholes. It would be a boon to revenues in itself if millionaires actually paid the 35% rate they're supposed to.

It's not just about paying more - it's about paying a fair share as well.

Those with low incomes pay exactly what they are supposed to because they have no choice.

Those in higher brackets have access to more and more tax write-offs and loopholes. The more you make, the more ways there are to get out of paying. The system is structured by the rich - for the rich. Not only are there more loopholes in the tax system for the rich, when they run out of loopholes, they start shifting money around looking for tax havens. And of course, it's really only the rich who can access those tax havens.

What needs to happen is the government needs to close all the loopholes and set up laws concerning havens. The problem is, only those in power can make those changes. The people with power are the higher wage earners and they aren't going to close the loopholes on themselves. Even if the government did step up to the plate and button down on all the loopholes, the lobbyists, the corporations, the wealthy-earners and so on won't just sit there and let it happen. They will fill the courts, bring in the lawyers and flood everything with red tape to the point that nothing gets accomplished.

So what do you do? We could raise taxes on the rich. It's not the right step but with so many rich people out there fighting to not pay anything, an increase in what they do pay may be a start.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

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 seems to me that the people who this is most likely to affect, e.g. the people making more than 1 million dollars a year, are the most likely to be in support of raising taxes.

And by the argument that "those who pay the most should have the most say", I would venture to guess that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have the most say. So you lose Winston, you get no lifetime supply of chocolate.

Also, I can't stand how you pick and chose sentences to address in a rebuttal instead of considering the entirety of the comment. It is annoying habit that you frequently exploit.

You should apologize.

Much is said about a "fair share." By whose measure is a "fair share?" If 3 people are in a room, not knowing their individual assets and they want to buy a $30 item, isn't a fair share $10 a piece? Then 2 of them find that the 3rd is worth 5 times as much as they are, so suddenly a "fair share" is different. They tell the 3rd "your fair share is 5 times what we should pay. No, on second thought, a fair share would be...we pay nothing and you should buy the item and give us some."
A "fair share" would be everybody paying the same amount. Since that's not possible a "fair share" turns into an appropriation that has nothing to do with being "fair." "Each according to his means," was a suggestion, not a mandate.

That is really not the function of the taxes. We aren't buying services, we are paying for how much we benefit from society.

If you are super rich you are benefiting more, ergo you pay more.

So the fundamental flaw in your analogy is that your analogy applies a false logical equivalence between buying a product and receiving a benefit. A better analogy is investing in a company. I think that is how Buffet looks at America. We are his favorite investment, and he's saying he wants to double down.

>> ^snoozedoctor:

Much is said about a "fair share." By whose measure is a "fair share?" If 3 people are in a room, not knowing their individual assets and they want to buy a $30 item, isn't a fair share $10 a piece? Then 2 of them find that the 3rd is worth 5 times as much as they are, so suddenly a "fair share" is different. They tell the 3rd "your fair share is 5 times what we should pay. No, on second thought, a fair share would be...we pay nothing and you should buy the item and give us some."
A "fair share" would be everybody paying the same amount. Since that's not possible a "fair share" turns into an appropriation that has nothing to do with being "fair." "Each according to his means," was a suggestion, not a mandate.

The example of "fair share" could just as easily been about receiving medical care, or any other service that the government provided. So, I think the logic holds. A "fair share" of the funding of Medicare would be everyone paying the same amount, assuming everyone gets an equal share of the benefit, which they currently do when they qualify. I'm not sure that an individual "benefits more from society" if they are rich. Maybe I missed the logic in that. Maybe you mean that they benefit more from society wanting the products/services they provide, the circumstance that makes most of the rich, rich, or just that they can purchase or consume more of what society has to offer?
The place to start with increasing government revenues is reforming the IRS and its complexity. And yes, doing away with some ridiculous deductions allowed, say the deduction on the mortgage of a second home. Increasing taxes does little to make businesses more honest, and we all know major deception occurred in the sub-prime mortgage debacle. Enough greed to go around the table there though, from home buyers/mortgage companies/banks/insurers/.....
It's a simple fact, already pointed out in this thread, that increased tax revenue will only put a dent in the deficit crisis and only serious spending cuts can get us out. Since entitlement programs represent the bulk of Federal spending, they have to be on the table to make meaningful budget improvement.

@snoozedoctor One flaw I find with the logic is governments don't provide service typically. Only in the military does the government provide this service to a client.

I would like add as an aside that when you raise taxes higher and higher to capture income that people avoid, the people that don't avoid it, the load becomes so burdensome that they can't afford to compete on the same playing field. It forces a feedback loop of insidious tax evasion to the point of not only avoiding paying a fair share, but any share at all. It also drives money over seas to avoid taxation. A simpler, and easier to follow tax code would be a benefit to everyone, including those who want it to be progressive. I found a couple of tax systems interesting, even though I don't support progressive taxes, mainly, "the fair tax". It is a flat tax but rebates all citizens the basic poverty level of good and services worth of tax back. It ends up having a similar effect as Milton Friedman's negative income tax where by people who don't make enough to meet the minimum standard of living don't pay any tax, and actually get some extra in their pocket. Some are critical that we are rewarding people for being poor in that instance, but no one wants to be poor, so I don't see it as a feedback loop like higher taxes causing money to go overseas is.

Fairly speaking though, the current system is completely broken, so people who want flat rates OR progressive rates are both not getting what they want. The entire tax structure needs an overhaul because this isn't working anymore. It is the same in the coding world. When your code beast becomes to difficult to manage, you start your new revision with all the knowledge you learned from the last revision. Tax 3.0 is needed, and soon.

Here's to Tax 3.0. If you run on that platform, you have my vote. It really does need to be dismantled. When a post-grad doesn't have a prayer of doing their own taxes with the form provided, something is terribly wrong. Thank God TurboTax is available to this simpleton.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 1:20pm PDT - promote requested by snoozedoctor.

Because you "earn" the income of about 80 people.

Or in otherwords - since the supply of money is limited - you steal the wages of 79 people who would otherwise have an income.

That's called selfish. Plain and simple.
[Not to mention completely cruel & dickish now that we're in a Global Depression]

>> ^pyloricvalve:

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?

That actually seems like a reasonable argument.

Things like infrastructure and other gov't services should be taxed on a progressive scale since the rich demonstrably use and rely on those services far more than a poor person would

But since we're all equal human beings, health care costs could be distributed more evenly throughout the citizenry. That at least seems reasonable unless someone has a good reason why not. The only thing I can think of is simply when it comes to the poor, you can't squeeze blood from a stone.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Because you "earn" the income of about 80 people.
Or in otherwords - since the supply of money is limited - you steal the wages of 79 people who would otherwise have an income.
That's called selfish. Plain and simple.
[Not to mention completely cruel & dickish now that we're in a Global Depression]
>> ^pyloricvalve:
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?



The supply of money isn't limited, per se...it's directly related to the total amount of debt. If people promise to pay more debts (and therefore interest), then there is more money overall. That's a big reason why consumer confidence and the housing market are such huge drivers in the economy. The more people take out loans for stuff/cars/homes, the more money becomes available for banks to loan. Hence, when there are too many defaults and foreclosures, the supply of money shrinks and you get credit crunches, etc.

If anyone's "stealing", they're stealing a relative amount of money compared to everyone else. You've got the right general idea, I think, but it's more like having a piece of a pie when the pie can get bigger and smaller.

Strictly speaking, it's more like 10 people since I'm paying double the normal rate due to progressive taxes. But I don't understand why you consider my earnings theft. Even if there is a limited supply of money, my money has been received through consensual exchange. If I buy a car which is in limited supply is it by definition stolen? Surely we should reserve the word theft for when things are taken from people against there will. Personally I think taxation is an example of this.>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
Because you "earn" the income of about 80 people. Or in otherwords - since the supply of money is limited - you steal the wages of 79 people who would otherwise have an income. That's called selfish. Plain and simple. [Not to mention completely cruel & dickish now that we're in a Global Depression] >> ^pyloricvalve: 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?

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Strictly speaking, it's more like 10 people since I'm paying double the normal rate due to progressive taxes. But I don't understand why you consider my earnings theft. Even if there is a limited supply of money, my money has been received through consensual exchange. If I buy a car which is in limited supply is it by definition stolen? Surely we should reserve the word theft for when things are taken from people against there will. Personally I think taxation is an example of this.


Ah yes...the standard Libertarian view of earnings = consensual exchange and taxation = stealing. The problem is, in a democracy, no amount of tax will ever be consensual to every citizen. That's kind of why we have majority rule, right? So, if one person thinks one penny in tax is theft on the part of government, does that mean we have to have zero taxes? Thankfully, the answer is no.

Most Libertarians favor some sort of basic tax for a defensive military, so consider this. For a time during the Civil War, you could buy your way out of the draft. That was consensual exchange under the law. Do you consider that type of exchange morally acceptable? If a rich father pays for a surrogate soldier for his son, is that fair? The son did nothing to earn that money through free exchange other than be born to a rich family...why does he deserve to have someone fight in his place?

With a truly free market, prostitution would be legal free exchange, you could sell body parts, offer your womb up to carry other peoples' babies, etc. If your answer is "well, let's not go that far" then where do you stop? If you sign a contract to offer up your eggs and a baby for someone else and you change your mind, who do the courts rule in favor of when someone sues?

These are real world questions that beg to be answered when you take the hardcore Libertarian position. Few people successfully argue in favor of their Libertarian position without inviting heavy criticism from wide swathes of the population...hence the lack of a strong Libertarian party in the country. This general line of thought just doesn't hold up in specific real world cases which come up, often making it to the Supreme Court.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@snoozedoctor One flaw I find with the logic is governments don't provide service typically. Only in the military does the government provide this service to a client.
I would like add as an aside that when you raise taxes higher and higher to capture income that people avoid, the people that don't avoid it, the load becomes so burdensome that they can't afford to compete on the same playing field. It forces a feedback loop of insidious tax evasion to the point of not only avoiding paying a fair share, but any share at all. It also drives money over seas to avoid taxation. A simpler, and easier to follow tax code would be a benefit to everyone, including those who want it to be progressive. I found a couple of tax systems interesting, even though I don't support progressive taxes, mainly, "the fair tax". It is a flat tax but rebates all citizens the basic poverty level of good and services worth of tax back. It ends up having a similar effect as Milton Friedman's negative income tax where by people who don't make enough to meet the minimum standard of living don't pay any tax, and actually get some extra in their pocket. Some are critical that we are rewarding people for being poor in that instance, but no one wants to be poor, so I don't see it as a feedback loop like higher taxes causing money to go overseas is.
Fairly speaking though, the current system is completely broken, so people who want flat rates OR progressive rates are both not getting what they want. The entire tax structure needs an overhaul because this isn't working anymore. It is the same in the coding world. When your code beast becomes to difficult to manage, you start your new revision with all the knowledge you learned from the last revision. Tax 3.0 is needed, and soon.


Wonderful, but no country in the world has tried this, and none seem willing to. It ends up just being a right wing scape goat argument. "I want flat taxes, but...we'll take care of the poor, we promise."

I'LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT.

@Peroxide I am hardly right wing, and many state use something other than income tax. Usually sales tax, which is at a flat rate. So, it is already there to be seen really. The US government used to subside nearly completely on tariffs as well, which is also flat. Long tradition of flat, sales taxes around the world, so I don't know exactly what you mean by your comment. Consumption taxes seem more fair as it taxes people who do and use things as they do and use them. Which I think was one of the arguments that was being thrown around as to the level of fairness. If you drive a gas hog of a car, you pay more consumption tax....makes sense to me! If you wanted to make it progressive, you could change the rate on certain things, or offer food stampish things to people that are low income, basically forfeiting their tax back to them in the way of rebates. Lots of different ways to handle it. I just know that now, I can't file my taxes without the help of a computer. And even then, I don't know if it is right. At any time the government could audit me and really, I wouldn't know how valid their claim would be. How many of you are sure that you aren't guilty of tax fraud? Have you read the X million lines of tax codes?

The problems with consumption taxes are:

A. Not progressive enough, which could admittedly be overcome, but how you could would be tedious. What are retailers gonna do, ask to see your tax statement everytime you buy something? It would have to be based on type of purchase, which would be very difficult to structure it to be progressive enough.

B. As I've mentioned numerous times, sales taxes cost too much to collect. Income taxes are over 90% efficient. For every dollar charged, it only costs less than ten cents to collect and enforce income tax. Last I checked, it costs about forty cents on the dollar to collect and enforce a sales tax. You'd then have to charge everyone more taxes to make up for the inefficiencies.

That's honestly where I'd advocate abolishing sales tax within every state, and have the state legislature raise everyone's income tax a small percentage, so everyone would pay slightly more in income tax, but no sales tax. If done correctly, everyone would pay less in taxes overall, and the state governments would get more in tax revenues due to eliminating inefficiencies inherent in a sales tax. That should be something everyone could get behind.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@Peroxide I am hardly right wing, and many state use something other than income tax. Usually sales tax, which is at a flat rate. So, it is already there to be seen really. The US government used to subside nearly completely on tariffs as well, which is also flat. Long tradition of flat, sales taxes around the world, so I don't know exactly what you mean by your comment. Consumption taxes seem more fair as it taxes people who do and use things as they do and use them. Which I think was one of the arguments that was being thrown around as to the level of fairness. If you drive a gas hog of a car, you pay more consumption tax....makes sense to me! If you wanted to make it progressive, you could change the rate on certain things, or offer food stampish things to people that are low income, basically forfeiting their tax back to them in the way of rebates. Lots of different ways to handle it. I just know that now, I can't file my taxes without the help of a computer. And even then, I don't know if it is right. At any time the government could audit me and really, I wouldn't know how valid their claim would be. How many of you are sure that you aren't guilty of tax fraud? Have you read the X million lines of tax codes?

Admittedly, I haven't read much about administrating sales tax before, but this study from WA State seems to contradict your numbers. For small retailer the cost of collection was around 6% and that went down to less than 1% for large retailers. That would seem very efficient. Would it be different if it were a National Sales tax? Asking, cause I don't know the answer.
http://dor.wa.gov/content/aboutus/statisticsandreports/retailers_cost_study/default.aspx

>> ^heropsycho:

The problems with consumption taxes are:
A. Not progressive enough, which could admittedly be overcome, but how you could would be tedious. What are retailers gonna do, ask to see your tax statement everytime you buy something? It would have to be based on type of purchase, which would be very difficult to structure it to be progressive enough.
B. As I've mentioned numerous times, sales taxes cost too much to collect. Income taxes are over 90% efficient. For every dollar charged, it only costs less than ten cents to collect and enforce income tax. Last I checked, it costs about forty cents on the dollar to collect and enforce a sales tax. You'd then have to charge everyone more taxes to make up for the inefficiencies.
That's honestly where I'd advocate abolishing sales tax within every state, and have the state legislature raise everyone's income tax a small percentage, so everyone would pay slightly more in income tax, but no sales tax. If done correctly, everyone would pay less in taxes overall, and the state governments would get more in tax revenues due to eliminating inefficiencies inherent in a sales tax. That should be something everyone could get behind.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
@Peroxide I am hardly right wing, and many state use something other than income tax. Usually sales tax, which is at a flat rate. So, it is already there to be seen really. The US government used to subside nearly completely on tariffs as well, which is also flat. Long tradition of flat, sales taxes around the world, so I don't know exactly what you mean by your comment. Consumption taxes seem more fair as it taxes people who do and use things as they do and use them. Which I think was one of the arguments that was being thrown around as to the level of fairness. If you drive a gas hog of a car, you pay more consumption tax....makes sense to me! If you wanted to make it progressive, you could change the rate on certain things, or offer food stampish things to people that are low income, basically forfeiting their tax back to them in the way of rebates. Lots of different ways to handle it. I just know that now, I can't file my taxes without the help of a computer. And even then, I don't know if it is right. At any time the government could audit me and really, I wouldn't know how valid their claim would be. How many of you are sure that you aren't guilty of tax fraud? Have you read the X million lines of tax codes?

And another advantage of consumption tax is the ability to capture some of the revenue lost from cash only transactions, on which taxes are evaded, dare say, even on illegal drug transactions. Assuming that currency stays in the US, at least some revenue is generated when it is spent. I made the mistake of being honest with a household employee I had for 2 years. I diligently filled out the necessary IRS forms and sent them in, reporting income, taxes withheld, etc., only to have the IRS screw the whole thing up and it took me weeks and much headache to straighten out such a simple thing. No wonder people would rather hand the employee cash under the table. Seems to me the fairest thing might be some form of balanced tax with a simplified progressive federal income tax and a federal sales tax.

Flat tax. 40 % income tax for everyone. End just one of the wars you're all fighting, and you'll be out of the economic crisis in 5 years.

You'd cause a new economic collapse as the middle class and poor, the majority of the market for goods and services, would have all dispensable income and more for the poorer vaporized overnight, causing a massive drop in demand, which would destroy the US economy.

>> ^gwiz665:

Flat tax. 40 % income tax for everyone. End just one of the wars you're all fighting, and you'll be out of the economic crisis in 5 years.

I'm in the lowest bracket of tax in Denmark and I pay 37 %. It would be fine. The loop holes for the super rich should of course be removed completely too, then all in all more tax would be collected. 40 % was, I'll admit, a little high when you look at the current tax rates, but say 25-30 % for all then.
>> ^heropsycho:

You'd cause a new economic collapse as the middle class and poor, the majority of the market for goods and services, would have all dispensable income and more for the poorer vaporized overnight, causing a massive drop in demand, which would destroy the US economy.
>> ^gwiz665:
Flat tax. 40 % income tax for everyone. End just one of the wars you're all fighting, and you'll be out of the economic crisis in 5 years.

I've always been confused at the whole: "The rich create jobs" thing. Every wealthy business person I know is trying to eliminate as many jobs as they can. They want to pay the smallest amount of people possible to do the most work possible for as little as they can possibly pay them.

It's the people who don't get mega-rich because they pay their employees a decent wage that create jobs.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Taxes cut. Tax revenues up. It works every time.

I'd love to see you backing that up with facts. Especially since the Bush tax cuts showed the exact opposite.

40% income tax on my wife and I right now would financially cripple us. We would not be able to afford housing or food. Right now, we have only about $100 a day to spend on consumables, and we are fiscally responsible adults. And we have 2 PhDs. I just got a fellowship for a postdoc at the best university in the country and it will barely cover the rent. And she is still looking for work there.

Indeed, it is likely that 10 years from now our combined income will place us in the highest tax bracket. It is also probably that I will recognize that there are people like me, who are just starting out, have a fantastic education, are looking for work, and struggling to make ends meet.

The arrogance of a flat tax speaks volumes about the ignorance and naivety of those of who propose such a ridiculously preposterous idea.

>> ^gwiz665:

Flat tax. 40 % income tax for everyone. End just one of the wars you're all fighting, and you'll be out of the economic crisis in 5 years.

Talking about the morality of various tax codes with someone who disagrees is nonsense. If you've been posting on the internet for years and haven't figured out that other people are quite attached to moral values that are incompatible with your own, then taxes are the least of your problems.

I'd be curious to find out where WP gets his talking points, especially since so many of them are refutable with official government data and a pocket calculator. Actually I skipped the calculator, so forgive my rounding errors:

People in the top bracket pay 38% of the income tax. Income taxes are 33% of revenues. Revenues are around $4.4 tr. So they pay about 500 billion a year.

The top tax bracket is 35%. If as WP claims we raised that to 100% We would be roughly tripling the income from them. Even only doubling it is still an extra 500 billion a year or 5 trillion over a decade, assuming the income of the rich stays steady (which it never does, rich people are much better at increasing their income than the middle class).

Both sides have hired legions of economists to support their viewpoints. I'm sure there's a right wing economist who could explain what's wrong with my arithmetic and make me look dumb (which I am, relatively), though I wonder how the author of that $2trillion figure would do if a liberal economist like Paul Krugman or Robert Reich were in the room while he made his arguments.

For our purposes, we should accept that parroting the talking points bought and paid for by your favorite political movement will not convince anyone.

Dude, Denmark isn't the US. Your government provides many goods and services to your people that we must pay for out of our own pocket, most notably health care. Wealth in Denmark is also far more evenly distributed in the US because your economy is far more mixed/socialist than the US's is.

In the US, you have thousands of people who were upper-middle class, bought an upper class priced home, then lost their jobs, or had to take massive pay cuts just to stay employed. Many of these people already lost their houses.

Our economy would collapse if we put a min 37-40% flat tax on everyone. No prayer that it would work.

>> ^gwiz665:

I'm in the lowest bracket of tax in Denmark and I pay 37 %. It would be fine. The loop holes for the super rich should of course be removed completely too, then all in all more tax would be collected. 40 % was, I'll admit, a little high when you look at the current tax rates, but say 25-30 % for all then.
>> ^heropsycho:
You'd cause a new economic collapse as the middle class and poor, the majority of the market for goods and services, would have all dispensable income and more for the poorer vaporized overnight, causing a massive drop in demand, which would destroy the US economy.
>> ^gwiz665:
Flat tax. 40 % income tax for everyone. End just one of the wars you're all fighting, and you'll be out of the economic crisis in 5 years.

"60 % of the time, it works everytime."

"That doesn't make any sense."

>> ^dahauns:

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Taxes cut. Tax revenues up. It works every time.
I'd love to see you backing that up with facts. Especially since the Bush tax cuts showed the exact opposite.

I can't find any info about sales cost collection. I don't know if that study you're siting costs of enforcement as well.

Income tax, from the stats I saw, was over 98% efficient, even with an IRS around to enforce it. The other issue is the latency of collecting sales tax compared to income tax. It allows the gov't to avoid borrowing money so soon, or during times of surplus, the gov't could actually gain interest on that collected money.

Regardless, it's still very difficult to fashion a consumption tax that is progressive enough anyway to allow for a healthy economy.

>> ^snoozedoctor:

Admittedly, I haven't read much about administrating sales tax before, but this study from WA State seems to contradict your numbers. For small retailer the cost of collection was around 6% and that went down to less than 1% for large retailers. That would seem very efficient. Would it be different if it were a National Sales tax? Asking, cause I don't know the answer.
http://dor.wa.gov/content/aboutus/statisticsandreports
/retailers_cost_study/default.aspx
>> ^heropsycho:
The problems with consumption taxes are:
A. Not progressive enough, which could admittedly be overcome, but how you could would be tedious. What are retailers gonna do, ask to see your tax statement everytime you buy something? It would have to be based on type of purchase, which would be very difficult to structure it to be progressive enough.
B. As I've mentioned numerous times, sales taxes cost too much to collect. Income taxes are over 90% efficient. For every dollar charged, it only costs less than ten cents to collect and enforce income tax. Last I checked, it costs about forty cents on the dollar to collect and enforce a sales tax. You'd then have to charge everyone more taxes to make up for the inefficiencies.
That's honestly where I'd advocate abolishing sales tax within every state, and have the state legislature raise everyone's income tax a small percentage, so everyone would pay slightly more in income tax, but no sales tax. If done correctly, everyone would pay less in taxes overall, and the state governments would get more in tax revenues due to eliminating inefficiencies inherent in a sales tax. That should be something everyone could get behind.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
@Peroxide I am hardly right wing, and many state use something other than income tax. Usually sales tax, which is at a flat rate. So, it is already there to be seen really. The US government used to subside nearly completely on tariffs as well, which is also flat. Long tradition of flat, sales taxes around the world, so I don't know exactly what you mean by your comment. Consumption taxes seem more fair as it taxes people who do and use things as they do and use them. Which I think was one of the arguments that was being thrown around as to the level of fairness. If you drive a gas hog of a car, you pay more consumption tax....makes sense to me! If you wanted to make it progressive, you could change the rate on certain things, or offer food stampish things to people that are low income, basically forfeiting their tax back to them in the way of rebates. Lots of different ways to handle it. I just know that now, I can't file my taxes without the help of a computer. And even then, I don't know if it is right. At any time the government could audit me and really, I wouldn't know how valid their claim would be. How many of you are sure that you aren't guilty of tax fraud? Have you read the X million lines of tax codes?

... just thought this should be restated... add some brackets, and remove the temporary tax-gifts to the wealthiest... no need to get excited... these numbers aren't net worth, just yearly income... this takes us back to the 90's... remember Saved-by-the-Bell? Yeah, the 90's,... see, its all going to be fine.


>> ^MycroftHomlz:

Here are the current tax brackets.
10% Bracket $0 – $8,500
15% Bracket $8,500 – $34,500
25% Bracket $34,500 – $83,600
28% Bracket $83,600 – $174,400
33% Bracket $174,400 – $379,150
35% Bracket $379,150
I think Buffet wants something like this,
10% Bracket $0 – $8,500
15% Bracket $8,500 – $34,500
20% Bracket $34,500 – $83,600
25% Bracket $83,600 – $174,400
30% Bracket $174,400 – $379,150
35% Bracket $379,150
40% Bracket $600,000
45% Bracket $1,000,000

When will he do this? On is death bed?

A tax-deductible foundation is not the federal mafia. Donating to a foundation is voluntary. Buffoon wants the fed mafia to shakedown more evil rich people.

FAIL. I mean, *coughFAIL*cough



>> ^notarobot:

cough
Fortune reports that Buffett will donate 85 percent of his fortune amassed from stock in the Berkshire Hathaway company to five foundations.
The donations, which will come from Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway shares, would amount to about $37 billion, based on current values.
Five-sixths of the money reportedly will go to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which specializes in finding cures for diseases that plague impoverished nations. [source=abc news]
cough
>> ^quantumushroom:
PAT BUCHANAN: Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion.
What's Warren Buffoon waiting for? A gun in his face like the rest of us get?

Quit acting like a victim, it's unbecoming, especially since you're casting stones.

YOU DON'T START NONE THERE WON'T BE NONE.

>> ^heropsycho:

I knew it was only a matter of time before you'd call me a socialist. That of course makes me a communist, since socialism and communism according to you are the same thing. ROFL...
So in short, everyone even remotely to the left of qm is a communist apparently.
>>

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise?

And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.

But why doth "the poor," who siphon the "free" money, have no civic responsibility at all? Shouldn't they be paying something into the system? Or maybe "dependency voters" are needed by a certain political party?

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.

The rich already DO pay more. It will do NO GOOD to shakedown the rich for ever more $$$. The problem with tax addicts is they can never get enough. It's too easy to spend money. Destroy the incentive to invest and/or create (or deny there is incentive at all) and you get stagnation. GOVERNMENT CREATES NOTHING.

Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.

But what about now, when our cherished federal mafia creates INstability? No sane businessperson will hire now with the Hawaiian Dunce in office. I've heard this claptrap about government spending as savior before.

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."

Henry Morganthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked.
But it's not working now, is it. OOPS! I agree that govt should not be run like a business. It should instead by treated like the dangerous raw force it is, because that's ALL it is.

We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic
record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.

This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.

There's some fact in there, but the cause and effect seems a little skewered.

FDR was a fascist, perhaps benevolent in his own mind, but a fascist in practice nonetheless, the sacred cow and Creator of the modern, unsustainable welfare state. He had no idea what he was doing and there is a growing body of work
suggesting his policies prolonged the Depression.


Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall.

This is all quite arguable. Yes, Bush the-liberal-with-a-few-conservative-tendencies ruined his legacy with scamulus spending, but nothing--NOTHING--close to 3 trillion in 3 years! Spending-wise, it's comparing a dragster to a regular hemi.

Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.

Do you wonder why you can so neatly explain things while the Democrats in DC, with their arses on the line, cannot? The failed scamulus has forced the DC dunces to change boasts like "jobs saved" to "lives touched". Apparently there's a lot more to this tale than the Donkey Version.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable.

They didn't have the votes.

The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for
that kind of claim whatsoever.

Compare taxocrats' dragster-speed spending of the last three years versus Repub spending during the 8 years before it. The argument of "But they do it too!" has some merit, but as the rise of the Tea Party has shown, business-as-usual is no longer acceptable.

Oh, and taxocrats, remember this: the Hawaiian Dunce considers anyone making over 250K to be millionaires and billionaires.

Dag forbid they even consider the logic I layed down.

>> ^bamdrew:

... just thought this should be restated... add some brackets, and remove the temporary tax-gifts to the wealthiest... no need to get excited... these numbers aren't net worth, just yearly income... this takes us back to the 90's... remember Saved-by-the-Bell? Yeah, the 90's,... see, its all going to be fine.

>> ^MycroftHomlz:
Here are the current tax brackets.
10% Bracket $0 – $8,500
15% Bracket $8,500 – $34,500
25% Bracket $34,500 – $83,600
28% Bracket $83,600 – $174,400
33% Bracket $174,400 – $379,150
35% Bracket $379,150
I think Buffet wants something like this,
10% Bracket $0 – $8,500
15% Bracket $8,500 – $34,500
20% Bracket $34,500 – $83,600
25% Bracket $83,600 – $174,400
30% Bracket $174,400 – $379,150
35% Bracket $379,150
40% Bracket $600,000
45% Bracket $1,000,000

Dude, I'm not the victim, I couldn't care less if you call me a communist. From you, it doesn't mean anything since 99% of everyone is left of you. Therefore, you think everyone is a communist. That explains most of your gibberish posts.

Pretty much how Lewis Black describes Glenn Beck playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except there's only one degree, and Kevin Bacon is a COMMIE!

I guess I need something that doesn't make any sense to end this post now, but it needs to be in all caps, because that makes it more emphatic...

MY ANACONDA DON'T WANT NONE UNLESS YOU GOT BUNS, HON!

*shrug*

>> ^quantumushroom:

Quit acting like a victim, it's unbecoming, especially since you're casting stones.
YOU DON'T START NONE THERE WON'T BE NONE.
>> ^heropsycho:
I knew it was only a matter of time before you'd call me a socialist. That of course makes me a communist, since socialism and communism according to you are the same thing. ROFL...
So in short, everyone even remotely to the left of qm is a communist apparently.
>>

Are you ever going to address the fact that the Great Depression was ended by massive record deficits, followed by taxing the richest by over 90%?

Your entire argument is deficits never work, and raising taxes on the rich hurts the economy. I just gave you an irrefutable example of that being dead wrong, and you go into FDR's New Deal. Dude, I'm not debating the New Deal with you.

Prove that the US economy got out of the Great Depression without massive deficits (regardless if it was New Deal spending or WWII spending, it's irrelevant), followed by massively taxing the rich over 90% in the 1950s, during which the US economy was extremely prosperous.

That's the thing, dude. You can try to dodge this all you want. I'm not letting you try to move to discussing the New Deal, or Social Security, or how apparently communist George W. Bush (SERIOUSLY?!?!? WTFBBQ?!?!?!?) is.

This example in US history proves your rigid, ideological economic philosophy is dead wrong. You can't argue honestly that deficits are always bad, and massive gov't spending is always bad, and the US gov't can't help aid in turning around the economy. It most certainly can. It indisputably did. There's no "some fact" to this. It absolutely is historical fact.

That's the thing. Once you admit that yes, deficits can and do help end recessions, and taxing the rich more heavily can be good for the economy, we might be able to actually have an honest, adult conversation about how to help the economy. Until that, you're just spewing idiotic and/or intentional misinformation.

And then you just completely glossed over the entire reason why the gov't is almost always the one who HAS to spark the economic turnaround. We NEED the gov't to stimulate the economy, just as we need the gov't to put the brakes on when the economy grows too quickly, which is when those deficits can get paid for incidentally.

Are you just gonna sit there and call everyone other than the Tea Party communists, or are you actually going to address any of this?

>> ^quantumushroom:

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise?

And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.
But why doth "the poor," who siphon the "free" money, have no civic responsibility at all? Shouldn't they be paying something into the system? Or maybe "dependency voters" are needed by a certain political party?

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.
The rich already DO pay more. It will do NO GOOD to shakedown the rich for ever more $$$. The problem with tax addicts is they can never get enough. It's too easy to spend money. Destroy the incentive to invest and/or create (or deny there is incentive at all) and you get stagnation. GOVERNMENT CREATES NOTHING.
Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.
But what about now, when our cherished federal mafia creates INstability? No sane businessperson will hire now with the Hawaiian Dunce in office. I've heard this claptrap about government spending as savior before.
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."

Henry Morganthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked.
But it's not working now, is it. OOPS! I agree that govt should not be run like a business. It should instead by treated like the dangerous raw force it is, because that's ALL it is.

We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic
record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.
This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.
There's some fact in there, but the cause and effect seems a little skewered.
FDR was a fascist, perhaps benevolent in his own mind, but a fascist in practice nonetheless, the sacred cow and Creator of the modern, unsustainable welfare state. He had no idea what he was doing and there is a growing body of work
suggesting his policies prolonged the Depression.

Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall.
This is all quite arguable. Yes, Bush the-liberal-with-a-few-conservative-tendencies ruined his legacy with scamulus spending, but nothing--NOTHING--close to 3 trillion in 3 years! Spending-wise, it's comparing a dragster to a regular hemi.

Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.
Do you wonder why you can so neatly explain things while the Democrats in DC, with their arses on the line, cannot? The failed scamulus has forced the DC dunces to change boasts like "jobs saved" to "lives touched". Apparently there's a lot more to this tale than the Donkey Version.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable.
They didn't have the votes.

The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for
that kind of claim whatsoever.
Compare taxocrats' dragster-speed spending of the last three years versus Repub spending during the 8 years before it. The argument of "But they do it too!" has some merit, but as the rise of the Tea Party has shown, business-as-usual is no longer acceptable.
Oh, and taxocrats, remember this: the Hawaiian Dunce considers anyone making over 250K to be millionaires and billionaires.

I don't know where the 98% efficient is coming from. The compliance cost alone I have read is close to 5 billion hours or so. With computers, I would imagine the sales/consumption tax is nearly automatic. Hard to find examples that aren't in someones sphere of influence. As for the "not progressive enough", that isn't really in the spirit of compromise. If I don't want it at all, and you want it all, halfway seems like the only way it will end up. A consumption tax seems easy enough halfway point. If you find it lacking, then join a charity that subsidies it out of your own pocket. Stop trying to be fair with other peoples money. Maybe I don't want to give every single useless tom dick and harry a leg up in life, I only want to help people I know and trust. Unless we are trying to make being a reclusive shut in completely against the law now. Progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't really progress at all.

Edit: Here is a less new, but more exhaustive link on costs.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr138.pdf

Last edit I swear:

I know you might not trust this, but this is a little blurb from the "Fair Tax" http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
It is progressive, which I don't like, but it is the best compromise I can find around. Seems reasonable enough.

oopps

Interestingly, all the fair tax graphs explicitly state that income=expenditures. Hopefully we all know by now that the richer you are, the smaller portion of your money you spend. Thus where is the tax burden going? Not on the very poor, they make little enough that they are exempt. Not on the very rich. They spend only a small fraction of their income. Therefore if it is indeed revenue neutral, the burden is falling on the middle class, who make enough money to significantly outweigh the prebate, and spend 80-90% of it.

However, the same graph showing the tax progressive also shows an effective tax rate decrease for everyone. How can it be revenue neutral if absolutely everyone is paying less? The trend line on the graph doesn't seem to indicate an intersection anytime soon. This begs the question: who pays more? If you give even one person a tax cut, you can't be revenue neutral unless someone else gets a tax increase!

All in all that site looks put together by people who wish to deliberately misrepresent the facts. I therefore want them nowhere near government policy. We have enough crooks and liars in Washington already.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I don't know where the 98% efficient is coming from. The compliance cost alone I have read is close to 5 billion hours or so. With computers, I would imagine the sales/consumption tax is nearly automatic. Hard to find examples that aren't in someones sphere of influence. As for the "not progressive enough", that isn't really in the spirit of compromise. If I don't want it at all, and you want it all, halfway seems like the only way it will end up. A consumption tax seems easy enough halfway point. If you find it lacking, then join a charity that subsidies it out of your own pocket. Stop trying to be fair with other peoples money. Maybe I don't want to give every single useless tom dick and harry a leg up in life, I only want to help people I know and trust. Unless we are trying to make being a reclusive shut in completely against the law now. Progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't really progress at all.
Edit: Here is a less new, but more exhaustive link on costs.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr138.pdf
Last edit I swear:
I know you might not trust this, but this is a little blurb from the "Fair Tax" http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
It is progressive, which I don't like, but it is the best compromise I can find around. Seems reasonable enough.

I admittedly can't find statistics on this. My google-fu must be tuned to much with finding tech related stuff too much now.

Consumption taxes cost the gov't a lot of money, not businesses per se. Most of what the stats I saw was due to consumption taxes actually being more prone to fraud. Granted, there's plenty of tax evasion with income tax, but it's actually less costly to find relevant info to detect and bust those people. It's easy to pull bank records, payroll info, etc.

If I find this data, I'll PM it to you or post in a relevant area.

If you're looking for a system that fits perfectly with ideals, you'll likely object to a progressive income tax. I'm not interested in what is philosophically ideal as much as I am in a system that works for the economy. I don't really care that I pay for other people's education, health care, etc. I care that as many people as possible are employed, that there's lower crime, that overall everyone is more prosperous on average, etc. That is far more important than me paying a few extra dollars in taxes for maybe even things I disagree with, and don't want to pay for. I didn't go around protesting that my tax dollars were being spent on the most recent Iraqi war, saying that their decision to go to Iraq inhibited my personal freedoms to do what I want with my money. It was for common defense, even if I disagreed with going in.

The individual freedom argument is oversimplifying the issue. Case in point, if a flat tax caused crime to go up, how is it a gain in personal freedom that you don't have to pay more taxes for things you object to if you're more prone to being robbed or murdered? If you're an entrepreneur, how are you more free if you don't have to pay for other people's education, but you can't make your business work because you can't find the skills necessary in your labor force?

It was progress for society to setup compulsory education for all people. You could argue it restricted people's freedom to not go to school, or parents to choose to not educate their kids. But that's frankly a ridiculous argument to say that progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't progress at all. Society progressed because the general population became literate through a compulsory requirement to become educated as children.

The truth is we have and should continue to make decisions like this based on what would benefit society, not what fits an ideology. Ideologies provide frameworks that help come up with new ideas, but those ideas should then be looked at with what the results would be, not lock us into only using ideas from that school of thought. Those discoveries that violate common ideologies eventually end up forcing us to change our ideologies in small ways or completely abandon ideologies altogether because they don't work anymore. But we should never do something only for the sake of ideological consistency.

I can't see how a flat consumption tax would help society. Objectively speaking, one issue our economy is facing right now is there is too much wealth concentration in the hands of the rich, so there's an incredibly weak market for purchasing goods and services business owners are producing. I'm not saying this to proclaim the rich are evil or anything of the sort; I'm just saying pragmatically the economy can't work for business owners nor the poor and middle class if consumers don't have money to buy goods and services the rich are producing. One way to remedy that is progressive taxation.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I don't know where the 98% efficient is coming from. The compliance cost alone I have read is close to 5 billion hours or so. With computers, I would imagine the sales/consumption tax is nearly automatic. Hard to find examples that aren't in someones sphere of influence. As for the "not progressive enough", that isn't really in the spirit of compromise. If I don't want it at all, and you want it all, halfway seems like the only way it will end up. A consumption tax seems easy enough halfway point. If you find it lacking, then join a charity that subsidies it out of your own pocket. Stop trying to be fair with other peoples money. Maybe I don't want to give every single useless tom dick and harry a leg up in life, I only want to help people I know and trust. Unless we are trying to make being a reclusive shut in completely against the law now. Progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't really progress at all.
Edit: Here is a less new, but more exhaustive link on costs.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr138.pdf
Last edit I swear:
I know you might not trust this, but this is a little blurb from the "Fair Tax" http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
It is progressive, which I don't like, but it is the best compromise I can find around. Seems reasonable enough.

@heropsycho and @Mikus_Aurelius Thanks for your great replies. I will continue this conversation some more after I get home, but I wanted to say mikus raised a really good point that I couldn't wait to investigate further. The "income=expenditures" does seem a rather bad assumption. And I would like to offer my own pontifications a probable solution, I also put in an email to their info station. I present it here for reading.

"Hello. I imagine you won't have time to respond to this email, but I
have a question about one of the graphs in the FAQ. In Figure 2, the
graph assumes to make a balanced rate based on income = total
spending. That seems like a rather dubious assumption, as lower
income families will spend a disproportionate amount of their total
income when compared to someone of higher income whom will save more.
Was this just done for simplicity, because it would seem like the
actual rate would have to be higher all around given that money being
spent from the upperclasses isn't nearly has high, or I assume isn't
nearly as high. Is their any evidence to support the claim, is what I
am asking, that total income is directly equal to total spending. It
seems like to bold a statement to take on face value without some
reason to believe that. I love the idea of the fair tax, this
question seems to be burning in my mind as needing an answer."

Now, income is a strange beast. Steve Jobs only gets 1 dollar a year from his job, so how is that graph mapping it in relation to his income? Who knows, perhaps that is why it is so directly correlated, that most all money will get spent in the end regardless of salary. And I think the other graph still holds in spite of the figure 2 one, that total spending seems to be more steady then total income. You can think of income as a fire, and spending as the ember. People are always going to find money to spend, perhaps even hidden money like we all did in monopoly...that no one REALLY knows about. I still have lots more questions than answers on many of the different ways we could do taxes, but there is one thing I do know. Complex systems favor large businesses. The rules of scale mean anyone with a payroll department already can factor off some of the cost of compliance with normal business costs. Small businesses can't do this as easy. Also, complex systems are breeding grounds for lobbies getting special exemptions for their pet business. The entropy of the intent of a complex, income based system seem like something we could do without.

In closing, I am sad we ended up talking about which one was "more or less effective". Unless the cost is astronomically different between the 2, we shouldn't let that even be a topic. Reason being is we were talking about which one is right or wrong, and if one is morally wrong, it really shouldn't matter if it is cheaper. It is kind of like lawyers and the public defender. We could cut costs of the justice system by snubing out the public defenders, but we would be doing something we see as wrong by saving money in this case (I am not saying I support public defenders, just an example). So the rightness and wrongness of something should be the first focus, and its effectiveness a very much latter criteria. I don't have time to get into that real argument, but I thought I would add those 2 little tid bits before I had to get back to the grind.

reading this thread made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

>> ^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.

>> ^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.

>> ^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 There is nothing intrinsically morally good about pleasure, beasts of men sought it as well. 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?

>> ^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.

It is quite simple:

Spreading out the wealth by any means will lead to a better economy.

Wisdom of crowds is a real phenomena (proven in millions of experiments).

Many people making economic decisions in the market will lead to better overall direction for the economy. As history has proven the greater the gap between rich and poor the worse and more volatile the economy gets.

Who is responsible for the current economic condition? The poor and the middle class? no, the money they make goes right back into the economy. So who is keeping money out of the economy and therefore stopping the exchange of goods and services from happening? The rich, the banks, and the business sector are sitting on over 1 trillion dollars each. It is clear who is responsible and it is clear that they cannot be trusted with that money considering our current economy. Why not tax them like they were taxed back in the Reagan days(or how about Nixon)? We know that the government won't be keeping its money out of the economy.

-Karl

>> ^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

*dead

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