Why not wealth redistribution?

Why not wealth redistribution?

Here's why not:

Simple as that. What did I win?

 

Only True Socialists believe that we cannot simply pay people to do heavy lifting for us, my good Comrade.

 

Like I always ask these whining people...wouldn't life be great if we had 1000 Bill Gates in our society...and economy?

 

This was not about me; I asked you if you believe that passing on personal money to others should be taxed at regular income tax rates? My daughter needs a down payment for a house so I give her $30,000 and you believe she should pay income tax on this?

I can give $30,000 to the local charity and expense 100% of it...and the charity does not pay tax on it...but I can't give my money, no matter the amount, to my kids without them paying federal taxes?

A gift is not different from inheritance...both are the transfer of money and assets to another party. Again I can gift a charity $500K but can't gift my kids $500K without them paying income taxes?

It's discrimination to attack those who are perceived to have more than others simply because they are perceived to have more. All of this money has been earned, taxes have been paid, so why collect more taxes simply because they transfer from a father to a son?

I don't have any political ideologies since I don't recognize or support any political parties or positions.

Here's the reality; one day I'm alive and have $20 million in cash and assets and the next day I'm dead, my wealth goes to my son, and you and others immediately want to take a huge chunk of it...how does this reality justify taxation?

Lastly, it doesn't make any difference whether actual taxes will be paid or not; what makes a difference is being subject to taxation based on absurd and petty tax rules...

 

Why not simply end the capital gains distinction whenever the unemployment rate is above three percent as a market recognizable metric?

 

All I know is the federal government is spending shy of $4 trillion per year and this increases every year. Currently we are not paying our way having continuous deficit budgets. Even though the government is already spending $4 trillion, looking around at all the problems we have we should be spending $5 trillion. The bottom line question is 'who' or which US citizens will be charged with paying for the government which ALL Americans demand? The government has personal income tax, capital gains tax, corporate tax, excise tax, and some minor miscellaneous income. The $4-$5 trillion must be divided in some equitable fashion between the four areas mentioned above. IMO with the current state of economy, no matter how the White House spins things, remains fragile at best...so this implies that extracting more taxes from any of the income groups is going to have a negative effect on the economy. It's at this point I say government needs to be reduced by about 25% or we just accept deficit budgets forever and $500B to $1T annual debt interest payments. Wealthy people are not evil...in fact their money does tremendous good in the society and government. When society places more pressure on wealthy people to pay larger portions of the government, there is a tipping point at which each of them will rebel and take actions to manage their wealth differently. Lastly, it sickens me that ALL Americans are not paying for the government they demand! I have no problem with the person earning $20K to pay $500 per year to the federal government while another person earning $20M pays $4M to the government...but when everyone at average wage or below starts paying $0...I have a huge problem with this...

 

First, the 300 million US citizens (+/- 30 million "others") must decide by 3/4ths majority vote that 15 Trillion GDP will be divided among all 330 million people within a +/- 10% salary relative to everyone else, in order to establish an equitable distribution of resources within an equilibrium economy.

Then to prevent the inevitable upset of that equilibrium in the following year, due to the free interaction among people in a free society, a regulatory enforcement agency empowered to use military force as leverage, will readjust the inequity at the end of that year, and redistribute the GDP once again, equally among all 330 million people.

 

Because something will only effect 318,000 American's it doesn't make sense to consider whether it's fair?



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I'm against wealth distribution because I believe in Constitutional rights or the people to be secure in their property. People have a right to their property.

Socialism is just a scam for some people to steal other people's property because some people are envious that some people have more stuff than other people and they can't use the system to their advantage.

I think that if these people could use the system to their advantage, and would see hoe they could generate wealth for themselves, then there could be less socialists in the world.

Possibly, at least.

 

Why can we still afford a War on Drugs?

 

One argument is reducing the availability of incapacitating drugs results in a more productive nation. Therefore spending some of that productivity to keep the incapacitating drugs out of the nation can be profitable.



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We already know that must be false simply because Prohibition proved it to be so; why repeat a known, historical mistake and claim you are not really like that, afterward.

 

The end of prohibition was the start of the great depression. That prohibition didn't last doesn't mean folks are not more productive, the economy stronger, when folks are sober. It just means in the 1930's folks chose give up, get high, and hope someone else would keep the economy going. They were wrong.




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http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html

The result of prohibition was quite the opposite of its intended reasoning. Crime went up, productivity fell.

 

You seem to be missing the point about Al Capone, not only getting wealthy, but also being a patriot to Individual Liberty.

 

Well, as a 58 year old who has been putting money into IRAs and 401ks since the early 80's, I am not that confident that investments are a safety net that can replace SS. Is it something worth having? Yes. Does it provide security? No. You seem to believe that the government must tax itself before it can spend. This is a holdover from the Gold Standard days. If you are interested in learning more about how fiat money actually works, try reading Angry Bear or New Economic Perspectives. If you keep an open mind, you might come to the same realization I did which is that everything I thought I knew about macro was biased towards a money system that no longer exists. You seem like one of the rare rational posters here, check out those sites.

 

Only the right is fiscally irresponsible enough to not realize they should be making more money, with an official Mint at their disposal under Any form of Capitalism.

 

And when prohibition ended, productivity plummeted. When folks choose to give up, get high, and hope someone else will keep the economy going... laws may not be enough. Sometimes it all just need to fall apart before it get's better.




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Taxpayer's statement makes perfect sense from the viewpoint of a taxpayer. From the point of view of a citizen, however, that view of government entitlements makes much less sense because as a citizen one must think not only of one's own personal bank balance but of the soundness of the larger society within which our individual lives and household economies take place. Social equilibrium is more than just a nice idea, it is essential to our national security, the functioning of our market economy, and our constitutional democracy itself. This is very hard for conservatives, who are really anarchists, to grasp.

 

Prohibition failed in almost every way imaginable. From Bank rolling crime syndicates to being completely ineffective it was an utter failure.

From http://www.albany.edu/~wm731882/future1_final.html


beyond the first year, alcohol consumption was close to preprohibition levels. It wasn't working, Repealing prohibition allowed the government to tax alcohol during the middle of the GD which was used to fund relief programs.
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/roaring-twenties/essays/prohibition-and-its-effects

 

Can you cite sources. Prohibition ended because the cure was worse than the disease.

 

My proposal does eliminate all deductions and replaces them with an exemption but there are some ways around it.

For example the case of a parent wanting to give their child $30,000 as a down payment on a house. Why not provide the money under an "on demand" loan to her and just not demand repayment. A loan is not income although it would become an "asset" of your estate. If she is an heir to your estate then she could claim the "once-in-a-lifetime exemption" of up to $10 million and never pay income tax on it.

Because there are no deductions (replaced by the exemption) your donation to charity is not tax deductable but the charity, as a not-for-profit enterprise, will not pay any taxes on it. Yes, some will say that might hurt charitable contributions but the fact is that people don't donate to charities because the donation is tax deductable. They donate to charities because they care about those the charities benefit. In short, those that state my proposal will hurt charitable contributions ae lying because people don't donate to charity based upon the fact the donation is deductable.

Yes, if you have a $20 million estate and leave it all to a single heir there would be an income tax on part of it based upon my proposal. The first $10 million would be exempt but the second $10 million would be subject to the income tax rate. Using my computation of a tax rate for 2013 (to balance the budget) the tax would be $2,900,000 (i,e, 29%) so instead of $20 million they would receive $17,100,000 instead. That single heir is not seeing a "huge chunk" of their inheritance being lost to taxation by any definition (14.5% is not "huge") and I don't really feel sorry for someone that could easily have an $855,000/yr income forever without working a single day for the rest of their life based upon a simple guarenteed 5% ROI on their money. Forgive me for being more concerned with those that can't afford to eat or because care about future generations that will have to pay "our tax bills" than for those that can have annual lifetime (forever) guarenteed incomes in the many hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

Of course if you have two or more heirs and split that $20 million estate equally then none of them will pay a dime of tax on the inheritance.

 

I'm not sure who you're referring to but have you read my proposal for privatization of Social Security (that eliminates Medicare)? It's on the following thread.

http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...eliminating-crony-capitalism-taxation-us.html

I want you to take note of the fact that not only do I retain a "safety net" I increase it about four-fold from the current minimum Social Security retirement benefit of somewhere around $7,000/yr to $30,000/yr but that is based primarily upon the "income from assets" and then a government subsidy to bring it up to $30,000 that only occurs at the maximum retirement age of 70. We can also note that the $30,000 safety net for "Social Security" is more than even the maximum benefits today for Social Security. On another forum I ran the numbers for someone that only worked part time earning $160/mo for life and their projected assets at age 70 was over $900,000 and their income would have been above $30,000. That wouldn't have been enough to avoid any necessity of the "safety net" though because it wasn't enough income to cover private health insurance so they would have been covered by Medicaid (the safety net when Medicare goes away).

On the flip side person will be able to retire at anytime once their assets provide over basically $50,000/yr in income and all of the assets in their investment accounts belong to them so if they die before retirement and all of their assets when they die regardless of age become inheritance increasing generational wealth as well as enhancing the retirement investment accounts of their heirs.

There are numerous 405K's and IRA's out there today but generally speaking they're not restricted to "age-adjusted diversified" investment portfolios and a person can borrow against them as well as withdraw from them (early withdrawal penalities apply). My proposal requites "age-adjustments" as well as "diversification to mitigate risk" (the mitigation of risk to specific investments actually eliminates any "risk" to the investment portfolio). Well managed very long term investment portfolios always earn over 10% based upon investment history and I use 8% ROI when calculating ROI on accounts. I've always been conservative in running my calculations but they are based upon "preferred" investments over "general" investments. For example the history of the S&P 500 is an average ROI of 9% (general stock ROI) but the history of the top 250 S&P Stocks is well over 12% ROI (preferred stock ROI).

We already know how fiat currency works. It works because it's not "money" but instead because it's currency that's supposed to represent money.

Today's economic policies using fiat currency is based upon a violation of contract law and a violation of US statutory law that isn't enforced by the US government. A $50 Federal Reserve note is an "on demand promissory note" redeemable for one $50 American Gold Eagle coin (or 50 $1 American Silver Eagle coins) under US Statutory law and contract law but neither are being enforced today by our government.

"Money" is a common commodity used on commerce that can also be used to store labor. If a person works today and earns $1,000 that can be used immediately to buy a large "flat screen TV" then that was what their labor was worth. As a "commodity" money has an exchange rate with the flat screen TV and it retains that exchange value. So a person can defer purchasing that TV with their labor, store that labor as money, and then purchase the TV a year, five years, or whenever in the future. Fiat currency is not "money" (it is a promissory note) and the use of fiat currency results in the "theft of labor" expended by the person as it makes the labor stored lose it's purchasing power over time. Five years from now that $1,000 stored as Federal Reserve notes will no longer purchase the same flat screen TV that, because of inflation, is no longer selling for $1,000.

Economies based upon fiat currency appear to work because they expand the ecomomy based upon the theft of labor from the worker. The beneficiaries of this theft of labor are those that have their assets something that benefits from the theft. For example a person that has their assets in stocks benefits because corporations benefit from the theft of labor from the worker.

Yes, we know how fiat currency works and those that advocate it generally leave out the parts about it being a violation of contract law, statutory law, and that the economic gains are a result of the theft of labor from the person that stores their labor in fiat currency that loses value over time.

 

Let's address this from the opposite direction. All of these 318,000 Americans have the huge wealth wealth accumulation they have because they've been taxed at less than 1/2 the tax rates when compared to workers. That wealth is all based upon "capital investments" (not their labor) and it is taxed at less than 20% (the average tax rate for these individuals is something like 17% athough the capital gains tax rate tops out at 20%) while workers have a tax rate of 39.6% if they had the same income.

So their vast wealth is based upon unfair taxation that we've had for decades. It is not unreasonable to return some of that excessive wealth accumulation back to the government through taxation because of the previous "favortism" where they benefited from unfair taxation.

 

No matter how it is spinned...I unequivocally disagree with any taxes on gifting or inheritance...it is a simply a transfer of previously-taxed cash...