DEAR RICH FOLKS: Get Ready For A (Tax) Revolution...

by darthfader 88 Replies latest social current

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  NewChapter

  It's nothing but spin. He never intended to communicate such ideas. No one is intersted in capping the assets of the rich. They are rich because they benefitted from our system and now they don't want to pay their fair share to support that system. And by THEY, I mean many. So not only do they want to continue to benefit from a system they refuse to support, they want the rest of us to pay for it. When will it be enough? When will they let go of a few pennies to benefit this country that has been so good to them? When will they start acting like patriots?

  They DID NOT do it alone, as much as they like to think they did. Where do you think all that money came from in the first place? When they get it all there will be no more to take. Maybe that will be when they finally have enough.

  NC
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  Berengaria

  Ohhhhh mercy
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  darthfader

  If everyone pays 10% is that equally fair? The wealthy have more income therefore they will pay a larger amount. Sliding the interest rate up seems "unfair" to me.

  NC, "They did not do it alone..."

  Who was there helping them? Who was there taking the risks with them? Who was there thinking outside the box for them?

  cheers
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  darthfader

  Say I invent a better widget. This widget can be used by many companies to reduce the energy they consume in their fluorescent lighting fixtures. I spent many hours of my own time and a lot of my own money to get the prototypes to work. I paid several people to engineer better transformers and energy conversion circuits. Now I have a workable product that I believe is viable in the market place. It will pay for itself within 1 year (given nominal utility rates).

  I can now sell this widget to design to several companies for a percentage of the gross sales. I stand to make a lot of money. Why should I be taxed on that money at any higher rate that someone working for $30 per hour (a basic living wage in most parts of the US)? Should I not be rewarded for the risk, time and outside the box thinking?
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  HintOfLime

  YES ,,, and why not? This is one of my main complaints against Capitalisim .... our intrinsic value cannot be determined by how much money we make ;;; if it is, then what are we??? Just cogs in a wheel ...

  I don't mind helping the less fortunate... But that is just to their own shame. Pathetic. People need their hands held for everything. If illegal immegrants can find a place and make it work... why can't average white people who had it much easier? Yeah, so it's hard... are people not up to workign hard?

  You HAVE to wake up and kick your own ass. Rich or poor, successful people are doing it.

  When my father helped me out finding my first job... I found it embarassing. Women consider 'help' embarassing. Handicapped people do. Overweight people do. Immigrants do. Why shouldn't anyone find hand-holding and hand-outs embarassing today?

  Hand-outs are the resorts of failures.

  - Lime
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  NewChapter

  I can now sell this widget to design to several companies for a percentage of the gross sales. I stand to make a lot of money. Why should I be taxed on that money at any higher rate that someone working for $30 per hour (a basic living wage in most parts of the US)? Should I not be rewarded for the risk, time and outside the box thinking?

  Yes Darth you should be rewarded and you will. Now let's say you are an independent farmer. A corporation begins buying up indepedent farms, but you hold out. Your farm has been in your family for generations and it gives you a great deal of pride. The corporation farms get stronger, helped by government subsidies (tax money). It gets stronger than you because it has greater purchasing power. You have to charge more than they do because your operating expenses are simply higher. You don't have the same resources or power that the big corp has, so you can't wait for costs of things to go down, nor can you really bargain for better prices.

  So now your farm becomes worthless. You have some choices and one is to go work on the corp farm for a wage that they think is fair. Is it fair? It is what it is. And the corporation continues to grow all the while receiving subsidies.

  Or perhaps you work in a factory. You are the third generation and your family has helped make this company great. Of course you didn't invest MONEY, but you did invest labor and time. The company sees that labor is a LOT cheaper overseas and packs up shop and moves. Is it fair? You don't have the money to move overseas.

  The fact is that none of these companies got their alone. They got their with the help of American workers. The unwritten contract is "I will work for you, you will give me work." The company benefitted from subsidies and shelters and other loopholes, paid for by their workers' tax dollars. And the company says "Thanks and f*ck you!"

  NO ONE gets there alone! NO ONE. Once you have all the money, who will be left to buy the product? Once you have all the food, who will stop the people from simply taking it? Once the rich are the only ones to get health care, who will care to treat them?

  So yes, you should benefit from your great idea. But you didn't get there alone.

  NC
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  designs

  As your wealth increases you have opportunities opening up. From your first job to the time you were able to buy a home is probably the biggest leap. Tax laws give you advantages such as the mortgage interest deduction and home improvement deductions against capital gains and so on. Your next big leap may be company stock options. Matt Lauer of the Today show said that Jack Welch, then head of GE and NBC, gave him enough Preferred restricted stock to change his life forever. Now a new world of tax havens open up- Philanthropy and Levered Tax Shelters. You can now shelter pretax earnings through the use of these preferred tax shelter vehicles. So a little redress to access the earnings sheltered by these pretax vehicles is fair. Plus some International Tax Law reformulation is in order so that companies like Google who use pass through accounting in foreign countries send a little more than the 2% tax they pay here.
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  Berengaria

  Or let's say you are a capitalist, who makes their money sitting by the pool waiting for a check. Or you inherited it. It's not necessarily about what is fair, it's about what works. This is a society, no matter how much the right wants to focus on the individual. No one gets rich on an island. No one who works for their money gets rich without resources. Even the local dry cleaner is putting a bigger strain on the resources of my community than I am, why shouldn't they pay more? Is WalMart not using and abusing the highway far and away beyond what you and I are? Etc. etc. On and on it goes. There was a time when business was proud to be American and in general willing to support it. No more, greed and "I got mine" is the name of the game here.

  I was on plane from Zurich to New York recently, and got in to a great conversation with a Swiss man. He was sort of gently and embarrassedly telling me his thoughts. We started our conversation over the newspaper he was reading, so it was appropriate. He seemed puzzled at how unwilling we were to essentially pitch in for our country and each other.
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  NewChapter

  LOL, I remember watching Glenn Beck one day. I did this for 20 minutes or so, so that in the morning I could call my brother with "A Moment of Beck" . It used to crack me up. Anyway Beck was freaking out that Obama had said "Yes we Can." WHAT DID HE MEAN. HE SHOULD HAVE SAID "YES I CAN"!

  When you benefit from the policies and structure of the American economic system and then step over into maniuplating it, finding the loopholes, using it in ways that were never intended nor could be foreseen, use the country up and then abandon it, you're really not an upstanding business person. You are just sleaze. But now you're a sleaze with a lot of power and money, so you continue to manipulate the political arena always weighting things in your favor and against the common person. THEN you try to even take away his VOTE! There is no shame, no loyalty, and no morals. None at all.

  Keep fighting for them. Soon you'll be begging them for food and they can pompously say, "You should be embarrassed to ask for help. I did it, so can you!"

  NC
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  Berengaria

  Some of my favorite quotes from Jefferson.

  "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." --Thomas Jefferson to J. Madison, 1785.

  "What more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.

  "The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied. ... Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.