Originally Posted by Ziggy Stardust

Just something I want to say about "savings", like someone else said, "savings" are not stagnant. The money does not just sit in a hole in the ground. It is more like this, feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

When you "save" your money in a bank, you are basically loaning the bank your money. Which is why you recieve interest payments from them.

They then loan this money to other people, at a higher rate, thus they make their money.

So it's not just sitting doing nothing. The only savings that are not moving are the ones in a paper bag under the floor boards, or hidden under the mattress, etc.

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However, I think it is completely wrong to say that all "rich people" work harder or are more deserving of money than everyone else. The financial sector are not "hard workers" necessarily, or more than in other professions, they are just good at "manipulating money". In fact it really generally is not the "hard working honest people" that become rich, a lot of people do it by cheating, exploiting, lieing, etc, etc. Just like that guy that ran off with 50 billion dollars the other day, I forget his name.

Does a banker or "financial advisor" work harder than a carpenter? Are they more "skilled" than a carpenter? Is their work more productive? Or than a plumbers/mechanics/engineers/teachers/police officers/defence force workers/etc, etc? Not really, or at least I don't think so. They simply manipulate money. I would almost go so far as to say that the "financial sector" by and large, take the most out of the economy and contribute the least. Wall Street is basically a wank, it just gets exploited by a lot of "short selling" and "get rich quick" schemes.

I don't really see proportional tax increases based on wealth as punishing the rich. The country enabled them to become highly "successful" or just gain money, so they contribute more proportionally towards the community. I would call it more an "obliagtion" than a "punishment". It would be great if all rich people were honest, moral, trustworthy individuals and had the best interests of everyone at heart. But generally speaking they don't, which is how they became rich in the first place.

We have proportional tax rates based on income in Australia. We still have very rich people. Rich people are still going to be rich. We aren't communists, we have an essentially "free market" as in America, just some tougher regulations, especially in the banking sector it now appears. We have various socialist elements, yet still have a strong economy. We are far from being "communists" as you all group socialist ideas with, yet we are not a completely "free market" either. I don't see why you have to be completely one or the other. Both extremes are too easily exploited and corrupted imo, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.