Do you have the right to say that a “rich” person isn’t paying enough taxes?

Discussion in 'Budget & Taxes' started by drj90210, Jan 14, 2012.

  1. oldjar07

    oldjar07 Active Member

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    A flat tax is a stupid concept at this point in time, considering our current tax system is already very progressive. I'd say it is fine where it is now, but I'd favor reducing some of the exemptions and deductions.
     
  2. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    Because you nor anyone else is qualified to make the decision. You lack the knowledge and information to make "the right" choice. Wages are just like prices, their signals within the market and you wanting to arbitrarily dictate what is "too much" can only have negative consequences.
     
  3. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    1. The point is that they are better off then someone making $20,000 a year, no matter what their hardships are. Furthermore all debts, outside of medical in which case they shouldn't be voting of the Republican party (which an overwhelming majority of the wealthy do) are their own faults as there are very few within the top 1%, within the rich, who did not begin their lives extremely wealthy.

    2. Because of the fact that if they are making that much as a physician they are price-gouging and therefore contributing significantly to the disproportionate level of costs for health care in this country.

    3. Please explain these "uncaused" financial problems which can overrun someone's finances who makes half a million dollars a year.

    Furthermore if you play into either 1 or 3 you're playing into their game, their idea that you are somehow rich if you make $300,000 a year. You're well off. You should pay a higher proportion of taxes then those who make $30,000. That said, you're not rich. The rich don't pay taxes. The rich control half the wealth in this country within 400 individuals. If you think those 400 are somehow more valuable then the lower 150,000,000 combined then ethics are simply a lost cause in this country.
     
  4. oldjar07

    oldjar07 Active Member

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    Not true at all. I know what the right choice is. The free market is not even close to the best system.
     
  5. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    You can't and aren't capable. Proven by the economic calculation debate. You lack the information, the means to acquire said information and the knowledge to know what information is and isn't valuable to make those types of decisions.

    Which is precisely why an emergent system such as the market does best and has proven itself to be so time and time again. It's so efficient that even socialists abandoned they notions on central planning to embrace market allocation.

    More importantly, the "market" isn't a system, as I mentioned, it emergent and organic. The market doesn't do anything, but the agents within it react to one another in ways that cannot be replicated by planning.
     
  6. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    The market doesn't exist. The presumption that it does proves in and of itself that you live in a fantasy land. We live in a country where there major corporations run the government. They don't pay taxes, they do as they please, they break laws and abuse workers. As small business is bound by the radical idea of "law" it will never truly be able to compete with big business.

    In fact the United States today operates under a system very similar to central planning. A plutocracy of the 400 or so richest men and women work in, with, and around the government and throughout the economy in order to dominate it and bend it to whatever they see as best. You have no say in the economy just as you have no say in the elections. You are irrelevant.
     
  7. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    The "free market" doesn't exist. Indeed, it cannot exist in capitalism. However, its nonsensical to say "the market doesn't exist'. Even though the visible hand (via the management class) is an integral aspect of economic relations, the market remains key.
     
  8. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    The market does not remain key as demonstrated by governmental policy, specifically in regards to banking, finance, automotive manufacturing, and agriculture. In the case of each, when the market decided to work the destructive half of it's influence upon them the government came to the rescue. Banks and manufacturers were bailed out, for generation we've been buying up agricultural surplus. This is all not to mention the advantage explicitly given to corporations like GE and Walmart by the government when they decided the aforementioned were untaxable. This is not a market economy, it is a plutocracy.
     
  9. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    This is just reference to how capitalism naturally provides for a 'mixed economy'. You've confused yourself by essentially thinking "the market means laissez faire'. It doesn't.
     
  10. oldjar07

    oldjar07 Active Member

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    Economic calculation debate? I think someone like a President or Congress member has the information and the means to acquire information to make those types of decisions.
     
  11. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    You're mistaken, we do not live in a mixed economy, we live in a fixed economy. Government spending, benefits, and laws are not targeted at improving equality and competition, which is the main theory of the mixed economy, but rather ensuring the continued growth and benefit of the elite corporate owners on top.
     
  12. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    This is just drivel. We know that the economic spectrum goes from laissez faire to command economy. We know that the US is a mixed economy. Now you might not like the nature of US capitalism, but that doesn't give an excuse for the erroneous comment.

    You're confusing yourself here with the different types of mixed economies. A social democracy, for example, will clearly stand out from the Anglo-Saxon capitalism employed by the US. However, the ultimate aim is essentially the same: use of government to stabilise a capitalist regime (They just differ in how to achieve that)
     
  13. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    Stabilization is different from fixation. The US economy has fixed winners and losers. Therefore my comment is not erroneous at all but rather quite accurate.
     
  14. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    I haven't found one spark of validity in your posts so far! Even if you want to whinge about the US class system (and her relative lack of social mobility), you're still referring to a mixed economy. Given market concentration, its just reliant on other mechanisms to stabilise the economy and protect economic rents: such as the traditional use of Military Keynesianism.
     
  15. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    Do you think GM could fail? The answer is no. Thus they can only succeed. Thus the result is fixed.
     
  16. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    Mostly, mindless prattle, but this was exceptionally incorrect. Markets do, will and have always existed, regardless of the agents within it, many times in spite of the agents within it. The statement underscores your utter lack of understanding about what a market is.

    Yes, look into it. It'll keep you from making any other silly remarks like the one following this one.

    Even a computer, with unbound computing power (this machine doesn't exist) isn't capable of making all the computation necessary to replicate the market.
     
  17. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Again you're only referring to the government as an integral stabilisation 'economic agent'. You continue to peddle prance that somehow 'market=laissez faire'. It as wrong as 'government=socialism'; its just a variation on the misunderstanding over the economic spectrum
     
  18. drj90210

    drj90210 Active Member

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    But it was obvious from the context from what I wrote that by saying "right" I clearly meant "justification." One would have to be a complete moron to conclude that by "right" I was talking about a Constitutionally-protected freedom, rather than "justification." I don't think I could have been any clearer.

    I agree.

    I also mostly agree with this.
     
  19. drj90210

    drj90210 Active Member

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    What does this have to do with anything?
     
  20. drj90210

    drj90210 Active Member

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    Because this would be the antithesis of freedom (and common sense). It would be like giving the patrons of a restaurant the power to decide the cost of their meal, rather than the owner of the establishment. The only fair way is to allow free markets to determine cost (and salary).
     
  21. oldjar07

    oldjar07 Active Member

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    I didn't say governments need to micromanage, but they should be directing some of the bigger industries.
     
  22. oldjar07

    oldjar07 Active Member

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    People don't know what to do with freedom.
     
  23. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    Your rights end where another's begin and therefore the idea of "freedom" has no relevance on a finite resource. The hording of wealth by the top 1% directly impairs my freedom to live a fulfilling and comfortable life and therefore their mass acquisition of wealth is not protected by the blanket term of "freedom" whereas someones right to smoke what they please or marry whomever they please has no impact upon the preservation of my rights or the acquisition of what I seek and therefore should not be under the dictates of any law, federal or state.
     
  24. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    Bad idea, government has no incentive to make right choices, they've got no skin in the game so to say.
     
  25. Charles Julian

    Charles Julian New Member

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    Perhaps but corporations have the incentive to make wrong choices, to underpay workers, cut corners, and produce the cheapest, most instant pleasure possible.

    That said the middle ground is clearly syndicalism. The workers have much more at stake in a corporation then the stock holders and yet they are given absolutely no say. Outrageous. Simply outrageous.
     

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