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Woolley Arguments.

degsme

Council Member
Its curious that the Single Parent thing came out, because Trap has never mentioned that beofre in his discussions with me.

Furthermore, since money is a great taboo in our society, I seriously doubt that Trap ever had access to her financial records. And thus what he is doing is extrapolating her finances from her car and from who her parents were.

But notice the subtle racism here. Trap assumes that it is right and proper that he - a white male from a poorer background - be given EQUAL FOOTING to compete with a minority from a higher socio-economic status, and yet makes NO SIMILAR DEMAND about White Males of higher socioeconomic status.
 

degsme

Council Member
No saying something is "harmful" simply means that it has an attenuative effect on whatever is being harmed. Democracy is harmed, ie adversely impacted, by large concentrations of wealth. We see that from history and from pragmatic reasoning.

As for econometric efficiency, its legitimate to ask that question - but traditionally it is ROI - Return On Investment or Return on Capital. IE Growth rate increase. Simple measure.

In a free society, one of my goals is the preservation of private property rights
You've never been an uneuqivocal advocate of property rights. You only have advocated the protection of the property rights OF THE WEALTHY and the violent.

Degs -- you favor a policy of higher taxation on the rich and more social programs and entitlements for the poor, continued affirmative action into the indefinite future; stronger gun controls; stronger regulation of financial markets, and stronger environmental regulation
Because THE DATA LEADS US THERE.

While your citation of the abuse of labor is spot on, your history of the 17th Amendment is not. It didn't have anything to do with Morgan or Rockefeller pr CarnegieIt had been pushed since 1828, long before the robber-baron era
Yes it is one of the things they rather quickly discovered did not work well. BTW deadlocks in State leges were themselves an inhibition to democracy since it meant that a state would lack an appointee to represent them.

No, because it taxes family wealth out of existence at a certain level -- above that level, the farm or business gets sold and the source of the wealth goes away.
So when the farm gets sold, the heirs get none of the money... RIGHHTTT.. sorry no. It does not work that way. The wealth does not go away. What happens is that the assets get reallocated into more efficent economic uses.

That's very much about inheritance, as it is possible to own a farm or welding shop that produces income in the middle three quintiles, but contains assets sufficient for the death tax to kick in.
Since there is no such thing as a "death tax" I don't know what you are talking about.

Wealth concentration is a damn fine thing for an individual. It means you can build something and pass it on to your family.
Actually passing things onto your family is counterproductive to the individual. It may have EMOTIONAL appeal, but from a rational asset allocation perspective its a dumb strategy.

Taxing [inherited income] leads to distortions,
No it does not. The farms are not "lost" - ownership of the assets changes hands and form, but nothing is "lost"

Again simple coincidence is not causality. Since the inheritance rates were the same as in the previous decade when growth rates were robust you have to look at what changed, not at what remained the same. And what changed were the oil shocks of the early 1970s.
Well, a lot of things changed, including the loss of specie backing the dollar (and the concomitant inflation),
Well actually the floating of the dollar improved the growth rate (hint inflation does that).

So 3/4 of a person's income should got to the government
Nope... MARGINAL tax rates are different than the fully weighted tax rate. Try again. Less emotionally more rationally.

Actually that is EXACTLY where Apple, Netscape, part of Microsoft, Novell, Lotus, Genentech, Zymogenetics, Twitter ALL found their funding Every single one of them.
Oh, bosh -- that simply isn't true, and you know it
Wrong, and you can add Facebook to that list as well, though arguably the parents who's credit cards FB was launched on were actually the exception and wealthy.

But Apple was funded by Steve Jobs' parents. Netscape on the credit cards of a middle class cofounder Andreeson, Microsoft took money from BillG's parents who were wealthy but also from Ballmer's and Allen's who were solidly middle class. Novel, Lotus, Genentec, Zymo, Twitter ALL THE SAME. Yes Venture Capital got into it AFTERWARDS (in the case of MSFT they didn't need the VC money the used it for business advice) - but long after the companies were already on a solid growth curve. Note also that many VCs work with "institutional investor funds". Funds like CALPERS. And CALPERS is but one middle class pension fund, in one industry in one state. http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=/investments/assets/equities/aim/mgrs/a-d.xml

FACTS Trap FACTS. VCs don't change their investment choices based on marginal tax rates. They just dont. Having a sister and BiL who were both in the biz, and having sat on the other side of that table I can tell you that they don't. You really don't know what you are talking about here.

Back to your unproven strawman. Sorry simply wrong.
In what way. The government gets its first pick on 70 percent of your income when you're alive
Simply back to strawmen we go.

Hint, the wealthy are the ones who control the levers of government, not the otherway around. So it actually is the tyranny of the Minority. Furthermore The Constitution very much ENVISIONS the "tyrranny of the majority" in most areas EXCEPT THOSE explicity protected.

Hint-this is bullshit. There are too many wealthy who don't agree on the government and how it should be run. Regardless of their viewpoints, you want to penalize ALL of them
Um you've not demonstrated that
1) it is "bullshit" as you claim - you've offered no counterfacts
2) No one is "penalized". Marginal tax rates that level the Marginal Utility of Income impact are not "penalties" its simply a level playing field
3) The "individual" is very much in my consideration. OUTLIERS and SINGLETON CASES are not - not from a POLICY perspective.

In your society, a small business can't fire an unproductive employee. Not so in mine.
Want some oats with that straw?
 

imreallyperplexed

Council Member
I think that you are trying to convince me that my interpretation of the facts and/or my principles are misguided. Having debated with you (and having read your debates with degs and Woolley), I know that is not going to happen. I am quite comfortable with my interpretation of the facts and my principles. There are lines that I will not cross. Sorry if that disappoints you. (BTW, why should I believe you vis a vis Ryan's willingness to "compromise." I have seen no evidence that he would not do exactly what he says he would do. I prefer to work on the assumption that he means every damn thing he says and wants to institute the programs that he has proposed. Romney has endorsed Ryan's economic plans, Cheney's foreign policy and winked at the moral agenda of the social conservatives. That disqualifies him for my vote.)

Finally, my last paragraph was a prediction of what I thought would happen after the election. It was not a prediction of what I thought SHOULD happen. Personally, I don't think that Republicans have genuinely tried to find common ground with Obama and the Democrats. They have claimed principle. That is fine. I think that if Romney is elected with a Republican majority, they will run roughshod over the Democrats without any regard for Democratic principles or feelings. They will stomp on millions of Democrats. They will be just as divisive and partisan as they accuse the Democrats of being.

If Romney is elected President, I fully expect him to be totally divisive and partisan and to try to impose his very conservative agenda on the nation. He will not represent my views. Period. Romney is not a man who can "heal" this country. Anyone who thinks that he can is fooling themselves in my opinion.

I think that President Obama is right in saying that this election is about two fundamentally different visions about how to move this country forward. Both sides want to move the country forward in a particular way. Neither side wants the country to move backward. But neither side is pulling in quite the same direction. I accept that. If Romney is elected, I will not start pulling in a conservative direction. If Obama is reelected, I have no expectation that you will start pulling in a progressive direction. If Obama is reelected, I will be more optomistic about the direction of the country. I presume that you will feel more pessimistic. If Romney is elected, I presume that you will feel more optomistic. I will feel more pessimistic.


trap,

All of your positions are pretty consistent with what I thought that they were. I think that you identified our differences.



How can you favor something that can be redefined tomorrow? I asked a question earlier -- if we can use a living constitution definition of general welfare to do anything, what's the purpose of the rest of the Constitution? We woudn't need Article 1, Section 8, to define the powers of Congress -- Congress can do anything that benefits the general welfare, as determined by Congress.



Then you disagree with historical fact. I can document more than 1,000 attacks on Americans overseas and on American interests by Islamic terrorists since 1965.



We didn't "police" the Barbary Pirates, we attacked them at sea and on land (hence the line "to the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Corps Hymn).



If you mean he wants to ask permission before doing the right thing? I agree, he's not a unilateralist.





And I keep asking -- where is it authorized in the Constitution?


Why would they propose an amendment to change the Constitution so that it authorizes something they oppose? You're being unrealistic. When I see DEMOCRATS proposing a constitutional amendment to allow the institution of universal health care, I'll believe they're being serious. Until then, I'll continue to think they want to ignore the Constitution.



Again -- show me the authority. As for Ryan, Ryan's plan is too extreme as a result it will never be adopted in ull. I'm reasonably certain he knows this and that the Ryan Budget is cat's paw -- Ask for everything, and if you get more than half of it, you come out ahead.



What do you see as the role of SCOTUS? I see it as simple -- it is the Supreme Court of the land. It tries cases in law, including disputes between the various states, and it has the final review over laws to determine if the laws conform to the Constitution. It is not the job of SCOTUS to create laws, nor to re-write the Constitution, as those are legislative tasks, not judicial ones.

Your final statement involves either candidate being accused of being authoritarian if they're elected/re-elected. Is it or is it not authoritarian to force a person to buy an insurance product if that person believes they do not want it or that they can't afford it, or they would rather spend their own money on something else?
 

trapdoor

Governor
I think that you are trying to convince me that my interpretation of the facts and/or my principles are misguided.
I'm actually more focused on trying to make you see why I feel they're misguided. Forums like these seldom make large changes in people's opinions. I'm happy if I can get a few away from the "all conservatives are evil" meme.

(BTW, why should I believe you vis a vis Ryan's willingness to "compromise." I have seen no evidence that he would not do exactly what he says he would do.
I expressed an opinion based on what I see as the political realities. I have no special insight on Ryan's attitudes, but he's been kicking around Congress since the late 1990s, and I figure he knows the difference between what he'd like to achieve and what he can actually achieve. There's nothing there, in other words, to "believe."

I prefer to work on the assumption that he means every damn thing he says and wants to institute the programs that he has proposed. Romney has endorsed Ryan's economic plans, Cheney's foreign policy and winked at the moral agenda of the social conservatives. That disqualifies him for my vote.)
Well, I'm no member of the religious right, and I'd have rather seen almost any republican candidate other than Romney, but Romney will get my vote, if only because of Obamacare.

Finally, my last paragraph was a prediction of what I thought would happen after the election. It was not a prediction of what I thought SHOULD happen. Personally, I don't think that Republicans have genuinely tried to find common ground with Obama and the Democrats.
Neither side is doing that. Where was the common ground in the strong-arming of Obamacare? There wasn't one. The last truly bipartisan action was the education thing that GWB did with Ted Kennedy -- political ancient history in other words.
If Romney is elected President, I fully expect him to be totally divisive and partisan and to try to impose his very conservative agenda on the nation. He will not represent my views. Period. Romney is not a man who can "heal" this country. Anyone who thinks that he can is fooling themselves in my opinion.
Is healing what we need? Above you mentioned principle -- personally I think we could do with a deal more of that.
 

trapdoor

Governor
Its curious that the Single Parent thing came out, because Trap has never mentioned that beofre in his discussions with me.
Actually, I have mentioned before that she was a single parent -- if you recall, I expressed doubts about the efficacy or rewarding that behavior.

Furthermore, since money is a great taboo in our society, I seriously doubt that Trap ever had access to her financial records. And thus what he is doing is extrapolating her finances from her car and from who her parents were.
I didn't have access to her financial records, and I've told you as much. I had access to her, and her own statements about herself and her financial status, and access to her appearance, clothing, vehicle, etc., all of which are reasonable ways to assess someone's financial status.

But notice the subtle racism here. Trap assumes that it is right and proper that he - a white male from a poorer background - be given EQUAL FOOTING to compete with a minority from a higher socio-economic status, and yet makes NO SIMILAR DEMAND about White Males of higher socioeconomic status.
No, I assume financial aid should go to people with more need, without regard to their race.
 

imreallyperplexed

Council Member
I'm actually more focused on trying to make you see why I feel they're misguided. Forums like these seldom make large changes in people's opinions. I'm happy if I can get a few away from the "all conservatives are evil" meme.
And I try to make you see why I feel conservatives/Republicans are "misguided" (or stated another way "pulling in the wrong direction"). I don't expect to change your mind. (I do like it when folks can find some common ground and pull in the same direction but that does not happen all that often.) And I am happy if I can get a few righties off the "all libs are scum/evil" meme. That is a very powerful meme on PJ as well.

I expressed an opinion based on what I see as the political realities. I have no special insight on Ryan's attitudes, but he's been kicking around Congress since the late 1990s, and I figure he knows the difference between what he'd like to achieve and what he can actually achieve. There's nothing there, in other words, to "believe."
I see the Ryan Plan in much the same way that you seem to see Obamacare. He, Romney, and the Republicans (if they control both the House and the Senate - with sufficient votes) will vote a party line and ram their agenda on the nation and call it a mandate. It will be the tyranny of the oligarchy. That is my belief. If the Republicans don't have the votes to ram their program through, there will be gridlock. If there is going to be gridlock, I would much prefer Obama.
 

imreallyperplexed

Council Member
Actually, I have mentioned before that she was a single parent -- if you recall, I expressed doubts about the efficacy or rewarding that behavior.
I have to ask this. What behavior? Did she have a child out of wedlock? Did she refuse to have an abortion? Was she divorced? Where was the father?

She has a dependent child to take care of. Isn't that a financial reality? Your position here seems to be equivalent to saying that her parents should have picked up the tab for her. And I think that her status as a single parent was a MUCH bigger factor than you seem to think that it was.
 

trapdoor

Governor
No saying something is "harmful" simply means that it has an attenuative effect on whatever is being harmed.
AND it means that the attenuation is bad - a value judgement.

Democracy is harmed, ie adversely impacted, by large concentrations of wealth. We see that from history and from pragmatic reasoning.
Which history and whose reasoning?
As for econometric efficiency, its legitimate to ask that question - but traditionally it is ROI - Return On Investment or Return on Capital. IE Growth rate increase. Simple measure.
Well, it's simple, but it may not be a good measure. As I said, it depends on your value -- for example, I think the way you're analyzing things, the ROI includes "investing" in social welfare, which means we're not using the same meaning of "investment." When the government spends money, that isn't investment -- it doesn't buy stocks that may increase in value.

You've never been an uneuqivocal advocate of property rights. You only have advocated the protection of the property rights OF THE WEALTHY and the violent.
No, I believe in protecting individual's property rights. Some individuals are wealth. Some are violent. Most are neither.


Degs -- you favor a policy of higher taxation on the rich and more social programs and entitlements for the poor, continued affirmative action into the indefinite future; stronger gun controls; stronger regulation of financial markets, and stronger environmental regulation --Because THE DATA LEADS US THERE.
No, Degs -- one view of the data leads us there. There are numerous other ways to evaluate the data on these issues. But the bottom line is, I would NOT KNOW this about your beliefs if you had not made policy statements that you say you've avoided.

Yes it is one of the things they rather quickly discovered did not work well. BTW deadlocks in State leges were themselves an inhibition to democracy since it meant that a state would lack an appointee to represent them.
Degs, make up your mind. Under your original statement, having a senator that wasn't popularly elected was a detriment to democracy. Now you're saying NOT having such a senator is a detriment to Democracy.


So when the farm gets sold, the heirs get none of the money... RIGHHTTT.. sorry no. It does not work that way. The wealth does not go away. What happens is that the assets get reallocated into more efficent economic uses.
They get some of the money, but they lose the creator of wealth -- the business or the farm. At best, the end up employees. The wealth does go away, and the assets that are "reallocated" (stolen) aren't reallocated more efficiently, they're simply destroyed as the farm or business ceases to exist.


Since there is no such thing as a "death tax" I don't know what you are talking about.
Oh, excuse me for calling a tax that you only pay when you die something other than an income tax.

Actually passing things onto your family is counterproductive to the individual. It may have EMOTIONAL appeal, but from a rational asset allocation perspective its a dumb strategy.
It's the primary reason people have ever developed wealth, Degs.

Well actually the floating of the dollar improved the growth rate (hint inflation does that).
Tell that to anyone who lived through Germany in the 1920s.11


Nope... MARGINAL tax rates are different than the fully weighted tax rate. Try again. Less emotionally more rationally.
I won't discuss marginal tax rates. If the bracket is 50 percent or 90 percent or 30 percent, even if that rate applies only to the last 25 cents earned, and the rest is taxed marginally at the next lower bracket, you still want a rate at which some of the income earned is taxed for more than half its value. That should never, ever, happen. The government is not entitled to 70 percent of 10 percent of my earnings, any more than it would be entitled to 70 percent of the entirety.

Wrong, and you can add Facebook to that list as well, though arguably the parents who's credit cards FB was launched on were actually the exception and wealthy.
It was launched on credit cards -- it didn't become "Facebook" until they got a check for half a mill from a venture capitalist.

But Apple was funded by Steve Jobs' parents. Netscape on the credit cards of a middle class cofounder Andreeson, Microsoft took money from BillG's parents who were wealthy but also from Ballmer's and Allen's who were solidly middle class.
As I said, they started that way, got a product up to a given level, and got venture capital -- and without the large amounts of venture capital they attracted at that point Microsoft would be as well known today as Visicalc.



FACTS Trap FACTS. VCs don't change their investment choices based on marginal tax rates. They just dont. Having a sister and BiL who were both in the biz, and having sat on the other side of that table I can tell you that they don't. You really don't know what you are talking about here.
No, they don't change their investment choices based on marginal tax rates, because investments don't get taxed that way. The marginal tax rate wasn't under discussion in regard to venture capital -- the fact that rich people have money they can put into venture capital and poor and middle-income people do not was the topic. But you think the accumulation of wealth is wrong, and should be stopped by increasing the inheritance tax. Where would the next venture capital come from if that happened?




Um you've not demonstrated that
1) it is "bullshit" as you claim - you've offered no counterfacts
2) No one is "penalized". Marginal tax rates that level the Marginal Utility of Income impact are not "penalties" its simply a level playing field
3) The "individual" is very much in my consideration. OUTLIERS and SINGLETON CASES are not - not from a POLICY perspectiv
e.

I haven't demonstrated that the sky appears blue to most human viewers, either, but that doesn't make it less factual. Are you saying that Soros and the Koch brothers share common views of the role of government?

As for "penalized" -- yes, we penalize people for their success. Taxation does that -- and it's a matter of high bad the penalty is before people start taking steps to leave the country or cheat on their taxes. If you think taxation is NOT a disincentive, then you stand in stark contrast to the people who increased taxes on tobacco, so fewer people would smoke, increased taxes on alcohol, so fewer people would drink, and increased taxes on gasoline in the hope people would use less of it. If "success" is a commodity, do we really want less of it?
 

trapdoor

Governor
I have to ask this. What behavior? Did she have a child out of wedlock? Did she refuse to have an abortion? Was she divorced? Where was the father?
The behavior of having a child out of wedlock is OK with me -- expecting the taxpayer to foot the bills for it, and then pay to educate you is another thing. I have no idea where the father was -- he wasn't in her life at that point.

She has a dependent child to take care of. Isn't that a financial reality? Your position here seems to be equivalent to saying that her parents should have picked up the tab for her. And I think that her status as a single parent was a MUCH bigger factor than you seem to think that it was.
Short of rape, and hadn't been, she didn't have to have a child to take care of. My position is always first the individual, then the family, then the community, and only then as a last resort the state or federal government.
 
I do believe that most vast fortunes are largely immoral in much the same way as a casino makes money immorally. Even if the participants enter the market understanding the rules and the unequal outcomes, the inevitable result is inequality. You can argue it away by believing in a meritocracy or by celebrating the one in a million who makes it big, that is a great selling point for capitalism. But the end result is that capitalism only succeeds at the margins, the vast majority of people end up losing relative to their contribution and efforts. The spoils are allocated unfairly in every capitalist system. There is no other way to accept capitalism unless you accept that the winners will take most of the winnings. Governments know this and enlightened capitalists know this as well. Taxation, progressive takings of the excessive spoils an uneven distribution of the profits is the only remedy if your goal is to avoid human suffering as much as possible. If your view is that human suffering is not worth considering except for Sunday Mass or during the occasional charity event then capitalism without progressive taxation penalties is right up your alley. No great nation or system has survived the long term consolidation of wealth by the few over the many. History is filled with empire after empire self-destructing once the people lose faith in the reason for existing as a group. Capitalism without forced redistribution is simply another form of servitude once the opportunities for the majority to exceed their birth positions diminish to the point where everyone just gives up. I think we are getting to that point now. All the rest of the back and forth between you two on individual arguments pro and con are like arguing about seating arrangements on a sinking ship. The ship is sinking and the reason is simple. Capitalism unchained is a broken system, it cannot continue into the future without a massive retrenchment.
 

trapdoor

Governor
I prefer a living constitution over the alternative. Life goes on Trap, we are not stuck in one spot with one absolute. Embrace progress. I simply cannot understand why you fear humanity so much.
Humanity I do not fear. Individual humans are another thing, and save for certain controls many of them (especially in politics) are not to be trusted at all.

The founders, the prophets, the oracles...all of them served a purpose for their time and place. Life is for the living not for worshiping the dead. I see challenges ahead of us that demand solutions, new ideas, new ways of thinking. I would not follow the advice of Adam Smith today, he is out of date. Why heedlessly revere the norms of men living 200 years ago over what is needed today?
Who said I have a desire to do this? Go ahead and happily push forward any social agenda you desire -- our Constitution is alive and can accomodate any change to government or governmental systems. What makes it alive, however, what gives it the essential flexibility and the spark of light, is that it may be amended. It can change, and procedures to effect that change have been in place since day one. It is not, however, subject to change via saying it means one thing in 1950 and another in 2000.

The very idea of a republic was to have those with knowledge and wisdom rule over the mob. If you substitute the founders or the ancients for the mob, you are ending up in the same place the founders avoided by making a republic. Make our system flexible, adaptable and pragmatic, it is the key to our future.
See above -- I believe the required flexibility, the means of adaptation, and sufficient pragmatism are built into the document. But I see no way for it to legitimately change beyond the prescribed method for making change, which is apparently what you desire.
 

trapdoor

Governor
I do believe that most vast fortunes are largely immoral in much the same way as a casino makes money immorally.
I don't have poll numbers to back up my opinion, but given the popularity of casino gambling, I'd have to believe either a majority or a significant minority of most Americans disagree with you in both cases.

Even if the participants enter the market understanding the rules and the unequal outcomes, the inevitable result is inequality. You can argue it away by believing in a meritocracy or by celebrating the one in a million who makes it big, that is a great selling point for capitalism.
My own background makes me believe in a meritocracy. I see know reason to change that in order simply take from the successful to give to the unsuccessful. What, then, is the incentive to succeed?

But the end result is that capitalism only succeeds at the margins, the vast majority of people end up losing relative to their contribution and efforts.
Not true -- it's a bell curve distribution. The vast majority, as always, are in the middle of the curve.

The spoils are allocated unfairly in every capitalist system.
Please -- one person's "fairly" is another person's cheat. Capitalism emerged as better than a number of other systems that had already been tried: feudalism, mercantilism, etc. It may not be perfect but it's "fairness" is not subject to analysis.
There is no other way to accept capitalism unless you accept that the winners will take most of the winnings. Governments know this and enlightened capitalists know this as well. Taxation, progressive takings of the excessive spoils an uneven distribution of the profits is the only remedy if your goal is to avoid human suffering as much as possible. If your view is that human suffering is not worth considering except for Sunday Mass or during the occasional charity event then capitalism without progressive taxation penalties is right up your alley. No great nation or system has survived the long term consolidation of wealth by the few over the many. History is filled with empire after empire self-destructing once the people lose faith in the reason for existing as a group.
And if you take the ability to make profits, and the ability to improve one's own status by one's own effort away from Americans, you will destroy their reason for existing as a group. One way to achieve this is by damaging successful people via excessive taxation.

Capitalism without forced redistribution is simply another form of servitude once the opportunities for the majority to exceed their birth positions diminish to the point where everyone just gives up.
Forced redistribution is simply a form of servitude -- the individual works not for the individual's own self worth but simply to benefit "society."

Capitalism unchained is a broken system, it cannot continue into the future without a massive retrenchment.
We don't know if that's true because unchained capitalism has never been practiced in the United States. The length or weight of the chains has changed from time to time, however, and they're pretty heavy right now -- and look at the wonderful economy we have.
 

imreallyperplexed

Council Member
What if she was married and the husband divorced her? What you are really saying is that her status as a parent should have counted for nothing in the financial aid picture. BTW, you judged yourself as "destitute." Did you rely on yourself, on your family, and on your community before you asked for help from the Federal government? I don't think so.

Sorry, I think that taking her child into account as an "expense" that the woman needed to take care of is totally legitimate. And it apparently has nothing to do with race. It sounds like if a single white mother got a grant and you didn't, you would consider that you would have been discriminated against because you were as "needy" as she was.

BTW, was the woman with the Jaguar on welfare as well? You never mentioned that. Or are you just expanding on the actual situation?

The behavior of having a child out of wedlock is OK with me -- expecting the taxpayer to foot the bills for it, and then pay to educate you is another thing. I have no idea where the father was -- he wasn't in her life at that point.



Short of rape, and hadn't been, she didn't have to have a child to take care of. My position is always first the individual, then the family, then the community, and only then as a last resort the state or federal government.
 

degsme

Council Member
No, attenuation is attenuation. If you attenuate poverty that is good in my personal view. Things that are harmful to the existance of poverty are GOOD. what makes harm good or bad is wether the thing being harmed is something you want to support more of or less of. I've passed no moral judgement in saying that X is "harmful to democracy". PERSONALLY I value democracy. But not everyone does.

Democracy is harmed, ie adversely impacted, by large concentrations of wealth. We see that from history and from pragmatic reasoning.
Which history and whose reasoning?
Name a nation, society or culture ANyWHERE in the world where large concentrations of wealth did not reduce levels of democracy.
As for pragmatic reasoning - wealth can be traded for influence. That means that the greater the disparty of wealth, the greater the disparity of influence. A disparity in influence IS BY DEFINITION the opposite of democracy. Increase the disparity of influence and you necessarily decrease democracy.

They get some of the money, but they lose the creator of wealth -- the business or the farm. At best, the end up employees. The wealth does go away, and the assets that are "reallocated" (stolen) aren't reallocated more efficiently, they're simply destroyed as the farm or business ceases to exist.
This is simply nonsense. If the farm is more efficient as a farm, it continues to be used as a farm, same with the business. Otherwise no-one would pay that market value for the asset. Essentially you are saying that the buyer is willing to buy simply to spend money. That just does not happen.

As for the sellers now being employees. So what? They clearly were unable to manage those assets efficiently. After all, a 35% LTV loan is not hard to pay off if you are gettng market ROI on your investment (9%). Because a 35% LTV loan even say at 12% interest rate, only requires a 4.2% Return On Assets to be break eaven. And if those assets are generateing Market Rate ROI of 9%, that leaves 4.8% profit

OTOH if they cannot make a go of it and someone else can, or the farm makes more money as a parking lot, then that's what the market dictates. Why do you want to distort the market?

Oh, excuse me for calling a tax that you only pay when you die something other than an income tax.
You don't have to pay that tax when you die. You ONLY have to pay that tax as part of it being INCOME TO SOMEONE ELSE. If you donate it to charity, you have no tax. QED its a tax that is linked to INCOME FOR SOMEONE, and not simply to dying. QED it is not a 'death tax'.

I won't discuss marginal tax rates. If the bracket is 50 percent or 90 percent or 30 percent, even if that rate applies only to the last 25 cents earned, and the rest is taxed marginally at the next lower bracket, you still want a rate at which some of the income earned is taxed for more than half its value.
Then in essence you are refusing to discuss actual economic policy and behaviour. because economic behaviour is driven by MARGINAL and EFFECTIVE tax rates. And if the Utility of Income is below 50% - why should we not tax proportionally AT THAT MARGINAL RATE? Economic Behaviour is not linear, why do you insist on a policy that ignores this?

As I said, they started that way, got a product up to a given level, and got venture capital -- and without the large amounts of venture capital they attracted at that point Microsoft would be as well known today as Visicalc.
You are again demonstrating your ignorance. Microsoft never needed VC money. They CHOSE to bring in a VC so that they would have the benefit of that business advice. They never needed the money. Same with pretty much all of the other startups. And as I pointed out, VCs invest regardless of the Marginal Tax rates. VC's are driven by one and only one thing - RELATIVE RETURN VS THE MARKET

But you think the accumulation of wealth is wrong, and should be stopped by increasing the inheritance tax. Where would the next venture capital come from if that happened?
Most inherited money STAYS OUT OF VC funds. VC money typically comes from active investors who are looking to build their own wealth.

I haven't demonstrated that the sky appears blue to most human viewers, either, but that doesn't make it less factual.
Really it does? _DSC4289-01.jpgDSC_5936 copy.jpg

Sorry, "blue" as a descriptor for the sky is not universal but specific to certain circumstances. Similarly you have made statements that may be true in narrow circumstances but are not true generally.

As for "penalized" -- yes, we penalize people for their success. Taxation does that
No it does not. It is not a "penalty" to tax folks in a way that the "pain" ie the "adverse impact preceived" is equal. That's not a penalty of any sort.

and it's a matter of high bad the penalty is before people start taking steps to leave the country or cheat on their taxes.
And we know what that point is. 90% marginal tax rates.
 
The reason to belong to any group is enlightened self-interest. It is a bargain between individuals that if the rules are fair and known, the outcomes will also be fair. Once this game gets rigged one way or the other, the masses who lose will no longer tolerate it. From time immemorial, those in power knew that their hold on power was tied to making sure the mob was satisfied. The mob in our world is everyone who is not in the top 10% of income. A system will not survive massive redistribution upward without some form of reform. Progressive taxes are the most common form of equaling outcomes. It is time to return to an era where the most still care about the least. If the least get too mad, the ones with the most will end up hanging or on a guillotine. Our current system of massive personal debt and massively unequal distributions of wealth without any measure of redistribution cannot be sustainable. Ask yourself how our nation can improve upon our fates when something like 40% of the full time employees earn 10 dollars an hour or less. I was making more than that in the late 70s in a grocery store. Sorry Trap but history proves you wrong. Misery is not sustainable as an ideology. You cannot get folks to join a losing team every year.
 

imreallyperplexed

Council Member
This is what Teddy Roosevelt called a Fair Deal and what FDR renamed as the New Deal. Now, admittedly, Paul Ryan calls his vision the "opportunity society" but the opportunity society seems to be a casino in which the opportunities are rigged to favor the oligarchs (i.e. the private sector elite).

trap said above said that J.P. Morgan (and John D. Rockefellar, and Andrew Mellon) did not destory democracy or the United States. And I would agree that each of them provided some benefits to the United States. The problem was the possibility of them amassing unchecked/unregulated power. What trap won't admit is that FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama and the SCOUTS since 1937 have not "destroyed" the U.S. either and have - in fact - done much good. Now, he will claim that the Federal government is unchecked and power hungry relative to the private oligarchs. He is entitled to his opinion. I think that trap is wrong on that score.

The reason to belong to any group is enlightened self-interest. It is a bargain between individuals that if the rules are fair and known, the outcomes will also be fair. Once this game gets rigged one way or the other, the masses who lose will no longer tolerate it. From time immemorial, those in power knew that their hold on power was tied to making sure the mob was satisfied. The mob in our world is everyone who is not in the top 10% of income. A system will not survive massive redistribution upward without some form of reform. Progressive taxes are the most common form of equaling outcomes. It is time to return to an era where the most still care about the least. If the least get too mad, the ones with the most will end up hanging or on a guillotine. Our current system of massive personal debt and massively unequal distributions of wealth without any measure of redistribution cannot be sustainable. Ask yourself how our nation can improve upon our fates when something like 40% of the full time employees earn 10 dollars an hour or less. I was making more than that in the late 70s in a grocery store. Sorry Trap but history proves you wrong. Misery is not sustainable as an ideology. You cannot get folks to join a losing team every year.
 

degsme

Council Member
My own background makes me believe in a meritocracy.
Oh bullsh!t. You yourself have pointed out that for example Obama's daughters have far more opportunity than you ever did, simply by accident of birth. That's hardly "believing in Meritocracy". And given that there is much less opportunity for economic mobility in the USA than say in Europe, the evidence on the ground for this is hardly there.

I see know reason to change that in order simply take from the successful to give to the unsuccessful.
You make the mistake of conflating "success" with "wealth" the two are not the same.

Not true -- it's a bell curve distribution
Except it isn't. Not unless regulated with that goal. Without regulating for a Bell curve distribution Capital allocation in pure "market capitalism" quickly devolves to an assymptotic distribution.

And if you take the ability to make profits,
And no one is suggesting that.

and the ability to improve one's own status by one's own effort away from Americans
That is EXACTLY what lower tax rates and fewer regulations have already done The USA has LESS INCOME MOBILITY THAN THE EU.

Forced redistribution is simply a form of servitude
Then ALL Society is "servitude" because Wealth Redistribution is one of the fundamental basis for society. Secondly, since the USA does not force anyone to remain a citizen, there is no "forcing" occuring.

Capitalism unchained is a broken system, it cannot continue into the future without a massive retrenchment.
We don't know if that's true because unchained capitalism has never been practiced in the United States.
For all practical purposes it has. Basically up through the early 1900s. And it resulted in a very slow growing economy despite vast tracts of resource wealth.
 

trapdoor

Governor
What if she was married and the husband divorced her? What you are really saying is that her status as a parent should have counted for nothing in the financial aid picture. BTW, you judged yourself as "destitute." Did you rely on yourself, on your family, and on your community before you asked for help from the Federal government? I don't think so.
What if she could fly? What if she came from mars? We can stack what ifs to the moon, and we end up right back on earth. As to your question about me, I drained my own resources, my family's resources and a county journalism scholarship (a princely $400 per semester) four two years, and then I joined the Army for four years, and at the time under discussion, I was returning to school with zero income. If I was enrolled in school, full time, the Montgomery G.I. Bill would pay me $350 a month, but the college's tuition was $1600 a semester and had to be paid in full, up front. What I had as far as resources at that point was about $300 remaining out of my last Army paycheck, which yes, I spent on tuition.

Sorry, I think that taking her child into account as an "expense" that the woman needed to take care of is totally legitimate. And it apparently has nothing to do with race. It sounds like if a single white mother got a grant and you didn't, you would consider that you would have been discriminated against because you were as "needy" as she was.
And I think that basically means that we subsidize childbirth. But at the end of the day, this is about the allocation of resources, and she clearly had more than I did. She had a $30,000 car, just for openers. I had an eight-year-old Ford Mustang that was, thankfully, paid for. Which of us had more in assets? Who had more need for financial aid?

BTW, was the woman with the Jaguar on welfare as well? You never mentioned that. Or are you just expanding on the actual situation?
I don't know, but I don't think so. She had a part time job, and as I said, her father paid her an allowance.
 

trapdoor

Governor
No, attenuation is attenuation. If you attenuate poverty that is good in my personal view. Things that are harmful to the existance of poverty are GOOD. what makes harm good or bad is wether the thing being harmed is something you want to support more of or less of. I've passed no moral judgement in saying that X is "harmful to democracy". PERSONALLY I value democracy. But not everyone does.
You wouldn't have mentioned the "attenuation" if you thought it was a good thing, Degs. And nice try on changing the subject


Name a nation, society or culture ANyWHERE in the world where large concentrations of wealth did not reduce levels of democracy.
Impossible to do. The democratic form of government isn't practiced everywhere, so you'd have to have a country where it had been established, and then was "attenuated" by income inequality. I suppose you could look to Argentina in the Peron era, but it was closer to fascist than democratic even before Peron took office.

As for pragmatic reasoning - wealth can be traded for influence. That means that the greater the disparty of wealth, the greater the disparity of influence. A disparity in influence IS BY DEFINITION the opposite of democracy. Increase the disparity of influence and you necessarily decrease democracy.
And poorer people can pool their resources, increasing their influence. Of course, you think that is wrong, but it works for a lot of groups in our country, and it helps to ameliorate the disparity of influence held by rich people. (This equalization is yet another reason I remain pro-union, yet another non-governmental entity that helps to balance the political disparity between rich and poor -- you'll note that I don't deny this disparity, but the solution to it is not to tear down the rich).

This is simply nonsense. If the farm is more efficient as a farm, it continues to be used as a farm, same with the business. Otherwise no-one would pay that market value for the asset. Essentially you are saying that the buyer is willing to buy simply to spend money. That just does not happen.
Not true -- a farm's efficiency is determined by a lot of factors, not the least of which is the efficiency of the farmer. Generally speaking, when a farm is sold it doesn't remain a farm -- it becomes real estate and turns into a bunch of three-acre "residential ranchettes." The real estate value is used for a one-time cash-out by the new owner, and the farm is gone.

As for the sellers now being employees. So what? They clearly were unable to manage those assets efficiently. After all, a 35% LTV loan is not hard to pay off if you are gettng market ROI on your investment (9%).
Easy to pay off, but impossible to get the loan so that you can pay the lump some required (loans against tax encumbered property? Hah!)



You don't have to pay that tax when you die. You ONLY have to pay that tax as part of it being INCOME TO SOMEONE ELSE. If you donate it to charity, you have no tax. QED its a tax that is linked to INCOME FOR SOMEONE, and not simply to dying. QED it is not a 'death tax'.
Road apples. You die, and your property is taxed because you died. It is not income -- it is value that has already arrived. It is not "income" to your heirs, either, and has never been considered as such in 200 years of American law.


Then in essence you are refusing to discuss actual economic policy and behaviour. because economic behaviour is driven by MARGINAL and EFFECTIVE tax rates. And if the Utility of Income is below 50% - why should we not tax proportionally AT THAT MARGINAL RATE? Economic Behaviour is not linear, why do you insist on a policy that ignores this?
Taxation is about revenue, not behavior. The progressive tax system WAS NOT put in place in the name of "marginal utility" -- read the debates about it from 1913. It was put in place because what today you'd call "red" states wanted rich coastal states and the people who lived there (the Rockefellers, Hiltons, Morgans and Carnegies), to pay more of the freight, and because followers of William Jennings Bryan thought taxing the rich more was "more fair." You can scour that debate from end to end without finding a reference to marginal utility, or market behavior.


Most inherited money STAYS OUT OF VC funds. VC money typically comes from active investors who are looking to build their own wealth.
Which would include people who have wealth, and want more. And who has wealth, Degs? In some cases, the people who have wealth are people who inherited it.


Sorry, "blue" as a descriptor for the sky is not universal but specific to certain circumstances. Similarly you have made statements that may be true in narrow circumstances but are not true generally.
Re-read what I wrote. I said "the sky appears blue to most human viewers." The viewers in your attachment have had unusual perspectives, but most people looking at a daylight sky see blue, still "most" and "universal" are not the same thing.


No it does not. It is not a "penalty" to tax folks in a way that the "pain" ie the "adverse impact preceived" is equal. That's not a penalty of any sort.
Penalty, pain, or just "disincentive," it's all the same. Make more, they take more.


And we know what that point is. 90% marginal tax rates
.

People start cheating well below that level. And I thought you said a marginal tax rate of 90 percent was the cat's meow in the 1950s. Why not 100 percent? Hell, as it's a marginal rate, why not 120 percent, and we can take back a little more from the next level down.
 

trapdoor

Governor
The reason to belong to any group is enlightened self-interest. It is a bargain between individuals that if the rules are fair and known, the outcomes will also be fair. Once this game gets rigged one way or the other, the masses who lose will no longer tolerate it. From time immemorial, those in power knew that their hold on power was tied to making sure the mob was satisfied.
Is the mob unsatisfied with American tax levels today? The last activity anyone saw out of "the mob" was the Occupy Wall Street movement. They didn't seem so concerned over taxation, they were just pissed off that someone got rich (except, of course, from those among them who already were rich).
The mob in our world is everyone who is not in the top 10% of income. A system will not survive massive redistribution upward without some form of reform. Progressive taxes are the most common form of equaling outcomes. It is time to return to an era where the most still care about the least.
Oh, please. "The most" give more to "the least" in various public programs now than at almost any point in U.S. history. Where did "the least" get their food stamps, excuse me, EBT cards, 60 years ago? Where was the WIC program? I spent my childhood in a 12x50 trailer home with no air conditioning and no TV -- it's damn hard for me to feel sorry for "the least" when I see them with a flat screen and digital cable.

If the least get too mad, the ones with the most will end up hanging or on a guillotine. Our current system of massive personal debt and massively unequal distributions of wealth without any measure of redistribution cannot be sustainable. Ask yourself how our nation can improve upon our fates when something like 40% of the full time employees earn 10 dollars an hour or less.
That, I can answer -- it cannot. So it would have behooved us to do what we could to keep corporations with manufacturing jobs in the U.S. For good or ill, a number of factors including high labor costs and our tax codes, made that less attractive, and either our businesses were forced under by cheap Chinese manufactured goods, or the companies moved production off-shore, which amounts to the same thing. Answer me a question: As those high-paying jobs aren't likely to return, how do you build a system of increasing social programs financed on the backs of people making $10 an hour? Because that's who will be the ones paying for it.
 
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