Fixing Inequality through Taxes

Expecting wages to keep up with government spending is optimistic. People today are living in twice the size homes, have cable, internet and cells that weren't around then. There are fast food and restaurant chains everywhere. People can save they just do not want to. They also consider SS more a backstop than they should.

 

And yet, it happened under the watch of the left with a democrat with a political degree.

How many people expected an Ivy League, MBA to almost single-handedly, overturn a Capital maxim that states, it merely takes money (such as massive budget surpluses) to make more money.

 

Having SS/Medicare contributions cover deficit spending hardly qualifies for the little Enron accounting surpluses you claim.

 

it was the right that "pioneered" raiding investment accounts and perchance, provided that bad moral example to wealthy capitalists who may like to practice Monopoly, with real money.

 

If you are wanting to play in the left right sandbox you will need to find someone else. Both parties are bringing down this country.

 

any Thing more constructive than simple, repeal?

 

Addressing the last point first we're basically in agreement. It makes no sense at all for low income earners to pay a tax to fund welfare for low income earners when they become too old to work. This is especially nefarious because the low income worker that lives in poverty for their entire life is forced to live in even worse proverty when they become too old to work (e.g. a person that earned the minimum wage of $15,080/yr will probably receive only about $9,000/yr from Social Security at retirement).

I addressed this problem for the low income earners with my "Privatization" plan for Social Security that was based upon low income earners (unlike Republican privatization plans that only work for higher income earners while leaving the poor in even worse poverty).

http://www.politicalforum.com/budget-taxes/399015-creating-fair-taxation.html

While I respect eveyone's opinions I do find cases where a person really should do a little more research because it would change their opinion.

Recently I came across a source that stated the average hourly (not salary) wage in America for 2015 (or 2014) is $10.55/hr. This addresses all hourly wage jobs regardless of profession, age, experience or whatever. When we refer to the "living wage calculator" (that grossly under-estimates some necessary expenditures) we find that virtually no one can live on this wage without government welfare assistance. This reveals two facts.

First of all it provides the reason behind why our government welfare programs cost so damn much. Many employers are nefariously scamming the system by voluntarily under-compensating their employees relying on government welfare programs to subsidize their employees' necessary expenditures so that they can make more profit.

Next is if the person doesn't have enough to live on without government assistance (welfare) then logically they don't have the income necessary to invest for retirement.

Once again the "Privatization" plan I propose for Social Security was the best possible solution I could come up with. Without imposing anymore of a financial burden on the low income earners it builds a huge amount of individual and generational wealth over time. It is exclusively based upon the "labor of the person" and, except for a small safety net 45 years down the road, there is no wealth redistribution involved.

I don't have a "perfect" solution but I do offer a pragmatic solution that has been reviewed by many liberals and conservatives (in fact it's based upon numerous suggestions and considerations from all sides of the political spectrum) with a general agreement in principle. It is a compromise because that's what's really necessary if we actually seek a solution to any problem. Standing on idealistic principles instead of facing pragmatic reality never solves any real problems for society.

 

Official poverty should be our civic obligation and goal to solve.

 

Fixing inequality should be as simple as bearing true witness to a federal Doctrine in American law and State laws regarding the concept of employment at will, and unemployment compensation simply for being unemployed on an at-will basis in any at-will employment State.

 

You pay yourself first, if having a smartphone is more important to you than having a funded retirement account I have no sympathy for you. Same with a newer care, cable TV, vacations and other discretionary spending. Even my sons in the military signed up for payroll deduction from day one, a small amount and increased it over the years.

And by doing they share in the economic opportunity and corporate profits. So do you believe we should limit the profits the poor can make by investing even a small amount?

 

Yep, just go to poor black neighborhoods and what business do you see thriving, nail and hair shops, rent-a-wheel, liquor stores, fast food etc etc etc. You pay yourself FIRST, you have automatic deductions and soon you don't miss it.

 

I think the only thing you and I will agree on is the privatization of SS/Medicare.

IMO, the federal government has no business defining poverty or providing welfare. It also has no business deciding wages. It is likely that welfare is promoting lower wages instead of vise versa. Also, wage laws are likely causing unemployment and stifling on the training. The concept that all jobs should pay a living wage is complete nonsense and damaging the economy and opportunities.

Before the industrial revolution families relied on everyone producing to prosper. It is ridiculous to assume this responsibility to one member of the family.

The concept of poverty is also out of wack with reality. I have never seen a fatter and lazy society of welfare recipients. No one is entitled to anything other than liberty. Welfare today assumes rights to things that didn't even exist a century ago.

 

Why do you believe what you do? The delegated social Power to provide for the general welfare is expressly declared in our supreme law of the land.

In any case, why does the right not complain more, about the lack of willful signatories to our policies public regarding our wars on crime, drugs, poverty, and terror?

 

Read my signature. Madison disputes your assertion.

Not sure what you mean on terror, but we were not to be worldly empirical or having a war on drugs(state issue).

 

The delegated social Power to provide for the general welfare is expressly declared in our supreme law of the land.

 

General welfare does not constitute welfare programs. General means duties that are general. National defense, infrastructure, courts. There are numerous quotes from the founders that dispute your socialist ideology.

 

Why do you believe that? The general welfare must include the specific welfare of things. In any case, it is the right that doesn't want to simplify public policies.

 

"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it."

Thomas Jefferson

 

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare. [W]ere the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America."
James Madison

 

I live in a black neighborhood and isn't true. There's a good diversity of businesses here. And I would be considered lower class and I'm not blowing money. I don't even own a car and I'm trying to save to invest in the stock market. Most of the poor people I know don't blow money on luxury items either. Growing up in the 90s and 2000s we had a POS tv and an antenna. The money made went right into bills, there was no saving. The phone I own is 8 years old and was given to me. Things like internet are a necessity nowadays unfortunately. That said quite a lot of people do try and live above their means and people should always strive to spend less then they make, even if that having $30 left over a week. When I graduate and make my 60-70k salary (market rate for my profession) I'm planning on renting an apartment that's about half of what I could afford to save and invest in stocks.

 

YOUR SIG:

“…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
-James Madison


House of Representatives, January 10, 1794.

Mr. MADISON remarked, that the government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.


http://www.constitution.org/je/je4_cong_deb_14.htm



Santo Domingan Refugees

[10 January 1794]

On 1 January a petition was read from a committee appointed by the Maryland Assembly to distribute $13,000 in relief, raised by private subscription in Baltimore, to some three thousand French refugees from Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), “stating that their funds are nearly exhausted, and praying the relief and aid of Congress” (Annals of Congress, 3d Cong., 1st sess., 153). On 10 January Smith (Maryland) reported from a select committee to the House and argued that such relief was legal, citing dispatches from “our executive government to the American minister at Paris, stating that they had thought themselves authorised to advance money, for the immediate support of the fugitives…. He mentioned the obligations that this country, lay under to France…. He imagined, that in this affair, the American nation had exerted a degree of generosity unparalleled in the history of any other people.”

Mr. Madison wished to relieve the sufferers, but was afraid of establishing a dangerous precedent, which might hereafter be perverted to the countenance of purposes, very different from those of charity. He acknowledged, for his own part, that he could not undertake to lay his finger on that article in the Federal constitution, which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. And if once they broke the line laid down before them, for the direction of their conduct, it was impossible to say, to what lengths they might go, or to what extremities this practice might be carried. He did not agree with the member who spoke last, that nothing like the generosity of America had ever been heard of before.

....On 4 Feb. the House passed “An act providing for the relief of such of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo, resident within the United States, as may be found in want of support.” The act authorized the president to distribute from the treasury to the refugees $15,000, which was to be provisionally charged against the American debt to France. The House agreed to a Senate amendment on 10 Feb., and Washington signed the act two days later (Annals of Congress, 3d Cong., 1st sess., 173, 422, 442; Philadelphia Gazette, 31 Jan. 1794; U.S. Statutes at Large, 6:13).

http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-15-02-0117

 

On 4 Feb. the House passed “An act providing for the relief of such of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo, resident within the United States, as may be found in want of support.” The act authorized the president to distribute from the treasury to the refugees $15,000, which was to be provisionally charged against the American debt to France. The House agreed to a Senate amendment on 10 Feb., and Washington signed the act two days later

http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-15-02-0117


The grant of power to “provide . . . for the general welfare” raises a two–fold question: How may Congress provide for “the general welfare” and what is “the general welfare” that it is authorized to promote? The first half of this question was answered by Thomas Jefferson in his opinion on the Bank as follows: “[T]he laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose.” The clause, in short, is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power. Although a broader view has been occasionally asserted, Congress has not acted upon it and the Court has had no occasion to adjudicate the point.

With respect to the meaning of “the general welfare” the pages of The Federalist itself disclose a sharp divergence of views between its two principal authors. Hamilton adopted the literal, broad meaning of the clause; Madison contended that the powers of taxation and appropriation of the proposed government should be regarded as merely instrumental to its remaining powers, in other words, as little more than a power of self–support.From an early date Congress has acted upon the interpretation espoused by Hamilton. Appropriations for subsidies and for an ever increasing variety of “internal improvements” constructed by the Federal Government, had their beginnings in the adminis[p.154]trations of Washington and Jefferson.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art1frag29_user.html

 

One of the problems I have as a libertarian is when some people make the financial decisions for other people.

It can be argued, for example, that a smart phone is a necessity in today's economic world. It provides necessary communication as well as internet services both of which are necessary in our modern economic society. Cable TV can be a necessity because it's one of the least expensive forms of entertainment and a person needs a few comforts in life such as entertainment. We cannot be economic slaves where our lives have no means of relaxation or escape from the stress of living in a modern economic society. Many of the those in the bottom 50% never or rarely take vacations and for those that do usually they keep the expenditures to a minimum.

In John Locke's arguments for the natural right of property he put forward the proposition that a person's labor is to provide for their "support and comfort." Retirement investment relates to (future) "support" while entertainment/vacation would relate to "comfort" and both are equally important to the person. If we were to create a household budget "support and comfort" would both be included as "necessary spending" that require funding. The problem arises when there isn't enough income to fund everything in the budget.

If we were to assign relative values then "support" takes the lion's share of the budget, probably 90%, while "comfort" would only take perhaps 10%. A person with inadequate income is going to reduce spending for both "support and comfort" but neither category goes away. If they cut both by 10% then the amount spent on current comfort is reduced but when addressing support the first target is generally retirement investment because it's not an immediate support item but instead a future support item.

In point of fact the necessary expenditures for "comfort" are probably cut by two or three times the percentage rate when compared to "support" expenditures when a person doesn't have adequate income.

A person can obviously dedicate too much spending to "comfort" and ignore necessary expenditures for "support" such as retirement investing for the future. I'm not arguing for "over-spending" but to believe that spending on a specific "comfort" such as cable TV or taking a limited budget vacation is wasteful spending is simply wrong-headed.

The bottom 50% of income earners are not spending extravagant amounts on comfort and their comforts are few and relatively inexpensive but they're also necessary expenditures.

 

Only the right would bring that up merely to prove their cognitive dissonance; where are there any delegated social Powers to provide for the common Offense and general Warfare over the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.

 

What?! FICA taxes. What's that? Don't you know that the right believes Only income taxes are real taxes.