Let’s Get This Class War Started

You just made his point. Look at your post. If that isn't "envy" poisoned speech, then Hitler's speeches were not either.

Actually I support everyone paying a flat tax. But landowners are just going to charge people a higher rate for land if we levy land taxes on them. Basically you are demanding that people pay twice. You demand taxes, and then you demand land taxes. That will harm the lower and middle class even more.

I can't think of a single time in which I gave the rich even a penny, that I didn't get something in return, and that something I got in return was more valuable than the pennies that I gave for it.

 

Did you make up this anti-landowner malarkey yourself or did you crib it from some meathead?

Without land ownership, the "tragedy of the commons" is inevitable.

 

"The title of my 1968 paper should have been `The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.' " - Garrett Hardin

 

No, they aren't. They're going to charge market value. People are not going to pay the landowner more just because he wants more. I've tried to drill that into your head before, evidently that was futile. (You kind of ran off and stopped replying?)

Nope, part of the proposal which Roy L and I support is to implement the land value tax in place of inferior taxes which burden the economy.

Not really, for example, purchase prices for land will fall to near zero, so it'll be much easier to buy a home for oneself without having to enslave oneself to a mortgage lender at interest just to see it repossessed for more parasitic gains.

When you pay Microsoft for Windows, you pay a crap load of economic rent. You also pay a crap load of economic rent when you buy land. You also pay a crap load of economic rent for pharmaceuticals. Need any more examples?

 

Republican Party principle #1:
Take all you can, from anybody you can, just because you can, and, most important of all, cater to the ridiculously wealthy, and screw the little guy.

 

No, you just made mine.

ROTFL!! I see. So now to identify any evil -- even to question any injustice -- that profits the rich gets the full "Hitler!" treatment.

Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that...

On what? And why?

They can't, because the supply of land is fixed. That is a fact of economics that has been known for 200 years, and is not seriously disputed by any competent economist. It is merely a fact that is not known to you, because you do not know any economics.

Simple question: if landowners could just charge more for the land, why don't they do so now? Think hard.

That is anti-economic tripe.

No, that is just you makin' $#!+ up. The actual fact is that under the current system, the productive must pay taxes to fund desired services and infrastructure, and must then pay landowners full market value for access to the same services and infrastructure their taxes just paid for. Under my proposal, people would pay for those services and infrastructure just once, when they paid government and the community for exclusive use of the land that government and the community make valuable.

That must be why landowners fight land taxation wth such maniacal ferocity...

Sure. Happens all the time: you have to pay the rich for what government, the community and nature provide. You pay willingly, because you want those things more than the money. But that doesn't mean it is the rich who are providing them.

That's a little detail you "forgot."

GET IT????

 

Some of it I figured out on my own, then I learned a lot from other honest, informed, and intelligent people, and then I figured out some more on my own. But why would it matter? You are unable to refute a single sentence of it.

Nope. Flat wrong. The tragedy is only of unmanaged commons, as the author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" himself said. Where management is lacking, commons are typically over-exploited, like oceanic fisheries. But competent management, even in the absence of ownership, can make unowned commons productive yet safe from over-exploitation, like whales since the IWC, or trans-oceanic flight paths.

 

History proves you wrong. China proves you wrong.

Tautology is not an argument. The question is: who and how many will be how rich and poor, and how will they get that way?

Like rob the productive:

"Behind every great fortune there is a great crime." -- Balzac

Like get robbed by the rich.

That's false and absurd.

No, in fact they did not.

No, in fact they are not.

No, in fact you cannot.

"There's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's waging it, and we're winning." -- Warren Buffett

Much of what they earn is taken from them before they can consume it, and given to the rich.

I.e., they buy the privileges that enable them to take from the productive.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

Jobs is very much the exception. Most rich people are not particularly productive. They often work hard at rent seeking, but they contribute very little to production.

Sweden, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, ...

Pakistan, Guatemala, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Paraguay....

 

The Commons gets managed because somebody has a vested interest in managing it. That usually entails some degree of ownership.

 

Pre-78 China, 63% of the population was under China's poverty rate of $2 a day. Are you seriously suggesting that the people who ran the Chinese state companies, were not rich? I promise you, they were.

Well if you were intelligent enough to read the whole post, before making idiotic comments, you would have read exactly how they will get that way.

Yes, in fact I can, and have on numerous posts on this forum. The rest are all lies, and wrong.

Nifty phrase, but ultimately irrelevant. Warren Buffett himself, proves his own statement wrong. Were there no wealthy people when Buffett was in high school? Yes, and yet he was able to become wealthy. Did the rich warfare class, miss Buffett on their radar? And what about the thousands of other poor people who became wealthy?

Name one. Name the person that had a $100 in their pocket, and a rich person forced them to give them the money?

Like buying a pickup truck? 1-800-GOT-JUNK was started by a high school student who bought a pickup truck, for about $800 or so. He's now a multimillionaire. Why didn't the Buffet rich class warfare, keep him from making millions? What "privileges" did he buy to make his millions?

Nor is making endless claims that everything you don't like to hear is wrong, without even an anecdote, "data".

Want me to list the endless numbers of CEOs that either were good and drastically grew the companies they headed, or were bad and drove them into the ground?

CEOs can make all the difference between the success and growth of a company, and the destruction and ruin of a company. To say they don't do anything, when we can clearly see benefits from good ones, and destruction of bad ones, shows that obviously they do a ton, and it's a very valuable work.

Are you seriously suggesting that these countries have no rich and poor? Are you crazy?

David Kenneth Roy Thomson - Canada - Net Worth $20 Billion dollars. Thomson Reuters (News and Media Company)
Carl Stefan Erling Persson - Sweden - Net Worth $60 Billion dollars. H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (Clothing Company)
Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen - Denmark - Net Worth $8 Billion Dollars. LEGO (Toy Company)
John Friedriksen - Norway - Net Worth $13 Billion Dollars. Various Business Ventures (Oil, Gas, Shipping, so on)
Graeme Hart - New Zealand - Net Worth $9 Billion Dollars. Various Packing and Shipping businesses (largest being the purchase from Alcoa)

No poor?
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...minister-fredrik-reinfeldt-youth-unemployment
"Poverty fuel riots" -Sweden
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11142578
"3 Million living in poverty"
http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-poverty-in-canada
"15% of Canadians live in poverty" -Canada
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/08/31/concerns-rise-over-poverty-in-norway/
"Concerns over rising poverty" -Norway
http://cphpost.dk/news/national/poverty-rise-throughout-denmark
"Poverty on the rise throughout Denmark"

Which doesn't make your point.

 

If the shoe fits you....

Flat income tax. Because deductions exemptions, fuel the belief that everyone else is paying less tax than you, and because I believe in equality. Everyone should be equal under the law, and that should include tax law. Everyone should pay the exact same flat percentage of their income. We all benefit equally from society, law, social utilities and so on. We should all pay the exact same percentage.

Irrelevant. The supply of "land" might be fixed, but people don't live on "land". They live in "Apartments" and "Homes". The supply of rent-able apartments, and rent-able and Buy-able Homes, is not static.

The fact that I can purchase a 7,000 sq foot empty lot for $9,000 doesn't really help me, when I need a place to live, and I don't have the money to build a home.

So I am captive to the availability of apartments and homes. If you drive up taxes on all the landlords, they are going to drive up rent prices. And supply and demand will only counter act that driving up of prices if it only effects a subset of landlords.

Obviously if you and I both own an apartment building, and taxes go up on just me, and not you. Then I can't raise my prices, because you won't raise your prices, so I'm stuck. I just earn less.

But if you are hit with the same taxes, and we both raise our prices, then renters don't have an alternative. That's what happens with taxes, because they hit everyone.

BTW, you should stop pointing out to everyone what a jerk you are. It just you look dumb.

Translation: "I can't respond, so I'll just be a jerk".

Everyone fights taxes and should. The problem here is, eventually you simply can't charge more. At which point, you abandon the property. In that situation, everyone loses. Apartments are no longer rent-able. The landlord loses his investment, and the public loses homes and apartments to live in.

The problem is, they don't. Government and communities, and nature, simply don't provide. Again, look at the difference between Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

 

Do you believe in moral evolution?

 

This issue could have been a moot point by simply solving for simple poverty in our republic in a market friendly manner and with existing infrastructure in our republic; because, basic economic principles would be practiced on a daily basis, not only when a person wins a lottery.

 

sure. i believe we are more "moral" now than during the Dark Ages.

 

If you believe in moral evolution, then you must believe that the plight of the ordinary person worldwide is in a slow, yet steady incline. You must believe that even the ultra rich are also morally evolving, and that they will be more generous with their wealth than their less moral predecessors. You must believe that spreading the wealth is a natural Darwinian occurrence.

 

Please tell me that was sarcasm. Just by doing nothing I've done more good than Rockefeller.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Federal_Reserve_System

Since implementation of the Federal Reserve Americans have gotten the shaft. Somewhere around $17Trillion so far, all paid at interest to wonderful guys like Rockefeller to the tune right now of $20-30Billion per month in total interest payments. We could have simply created the money in the Treasury, loaned without interest and continued on with a fiat system NOT tied to the control of major banks (through ownership of the Fed). CitiBank, JP Morgan, Chase, and so many others. We're on the brink and many should have fingers pointed at them for getting us there. Follow the money.

 

I only agree that moral evolution can happen, for the sole surviving species in the Homo genus.

Spreading the wealth of any form of seed may be considered a natural, Darwinian occurrence.

 

I feel like the ghost of Ayn Rand is writing your post here. She was no scholar, no deep thinker, no economist. She was a bitter woman who came up with her ideas because of her childhood and was also simply selfish. I also read several accounts too that she had a stinky vajayjay and had poor hygiene overall, though that's an irrelevant but fun fact.

If your post is not a reference to how the Ayn Rand types view the world, it's certainly a striking coincidence.

Also, your post seems absolutist. You talk about the Rockerfellers and how good they are and how they're better than the common man. First, they aren't. They are still men. Their worth is identical to any other man. Their wealth is a different story, but they are no better than any other man or woman. You could replace a Rockerfeller with a Schmitt but give Schmitt Rockerfeller's assets and wealth, the likelihood of no change in the outcome of history would be very high. Rich-man worship is simply ludicrous.

 

I have some new propaganda and rhetoric for our front on class warfare; why do the wealthiest have Any problems at all, if they can simply hire the best help money can buy, under Any form of Capitalism but not necessarily truer forms of socialism.

 

Your Ayn Rand stuff is common leftist drivel.

No, some men are more valuable then others. I will not be worth as much to humanity as the wright brothers, Saulk, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Flagler, Getty etc... I have come to accept this. One day you should too, it applies to you as well. It has nothing to do with "rich man worship" as you call it. You are just projecting your ruler worship on the right. It is respect for the fact that some people do very useful for things for society. Whether it is new steel making methods, oils distribution models, invention of the airplane or the graphic user interface. Maybe they created value and that is why they are also wealthy? Has that ever crossed your leftist?

 

The 'war' began when the divide became so obvious, and it was started by the rich, not the working class/working poor, AKA peasants. It might be ended by the peasants, or it reverts back to a monarchy or even worse, a communist dictatorship. No where to go from here but down, if logic and common sense doesn't make a play.

 

The man in and of himself doesn't make him worth more to society and neither do his ideas. It's his willingness to contribute, whether that be money, ideas or labor. The Wright brothers aren't 'better' than me because they invented an airplane. And they're not better than you either. They simply had an idea, which is what they contributed and then contributed labor to further that idea. This is what propels (pun?) society to greater heights, not self worth.

 

That is such leftist commie BS. Some people are worth a lot more to humanity then others. If it makes you feel better, you are worth more to humanity then Robert Mugabe.

They are still equal under the law, (unless the get special exemptions from Obamacare), but some people are definitely worth more to humanity then others. Some ideas and some labor are worth more to humanity then others, the way you like to put it. Why you dont understand that when it comes to pay is what is surprising to me.

 

First, keep on topic, this isn't about Obamacare.

Second, do I think some ideas, actions and labor are worth more? Of course I do. Do I think they should be compensated for that extra boost to society? Definitely. However, there's a distinction you're not making here and that's contribution vs. profiteering. For instance, the fellow(s) who invented television, the fellows who invented wireless communication, etc. should be compensated greater than the people simply making them and selling them with no connection whatsoever to the originator. One example is Nikola Tesla. The guy died dirt poor, but his inventions are making millions for those exploiting his discoveries. Seems ass backwards, don't you think?

 

I know this is shocking, but you are not exactly the most important person in my life. Nor is this forum a priority in my life.

I respond, when I have time to respond. Sometimes I lose track of a particular thread, and move on.

Back to the point....

Yes you tried to drill into my head the false claim before, and it's still false now.

Owning property is the same as running a business. All property has upkeep. Apartment buildings have maintenance that must be done. Just like businesses have overhead that must be paid.

If you drive up the cost of business, you have pass that cost unto the customer in higher prices, or employees in lower wages.

At some point, the market will not bare the increased cost, and the employees won't bare the cut in wages.

When that happens, the business closes.

Now, the theory that you advocate about land value tax, is that you can't close land, like you close a business. Thus, land owners will be forced to eat the cost of taxes.

This premise is wrong. You can close a property, just like you close a business. They do it. To this day!


The three buildings with the windows busted out, and boarded over, are abandoned apartment buildings.

No one is paying any taxes on those buildings. No one is living in those buildings. No one owns those buildings. Why? Because it's not profitable to do so. The land, in the middle of city, is completely unused.

You can buy these properties very cheaply. But no one does. Why? Because you can't make a profit from them!

If you drive up the cost of owning property, through land value taxes, and the land owners can not pass on the cost to the renters, this is what happens.

And see, if you pass a massive land value tax, the result is more abandoned buildings. Then with a declining tax base, I promise you, the government will put right back in place all the taxes that currently exist, and yet keep the land value tax.

Roy is a jerk. Don't be like him.

As for your proposal, if it actually worked the way you claim, then I would support it. But I just know for a fact, that it won't. Not only will we have to pay all the 'inferior taxes', but we will ALSO have to pay the land value tax.

I've heard this... but.... where's the example? Land Value Tax has existed for a long time. Name the time in which it resulted in near zero land prices? What country, and what time period. I will look it up if I can.

All of those are false. I don't know how else to say it, none of those are true.

And, since I'm on a Mac, it doesn't even apply to me. How can Microsoft force me to pay rent, when I don't use Microsoft software? At work, our computers run Linux. How can Microsoft force my company to pay rent, when we don't use their software?

Sorry... just all wrong. Try again.