Sry bro class started back up. Late nights and early mornings. But yeah I saw this when it was first broadcast. The big JS can take bits and pieces of news, thats cool, but then you're only getting a biased slant on the news and general point itself. I don't see why people think taxing everyone the same % is unfair, because its perfectly fair. I won't claim to know everything about tax issues, but I know my dad gets the piss taxed out of him because he graduated with excellent grades, and graduated with the highest first year job out of college. Now the way the people in the clip went about it, was a little extreme, yes, I agree, but its upsetting that people who work hard for their money, hard hard for their money, are being penalized instead of rewarded. On top of that the top 1% are whatever are the top philanthropists in the country anyway? Even if it is often for image, its not like people who make a lot of money aren't contributing to the poor and sick. Yahhhhhhhh
It's not about what's "fair." It's about taxing people who can easily afford to pay more and help the economy. Is the only reason to not tax the rich really that it's just unfair?
I actually agree with Handyman on this. It's so stupid what's being done now. It's unconstitutional, and there's so many other better ways to create money for the economy (hey, let's not spend so much!!) than unfairly taxing people in general, much less unevenly. Here's a video and article to make a clearer point of what's happening: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/1...alth-distribution-are-asked-to-support-grade/ And here's a good article that basically sums up this next election. Pretty long, but brings up a lot of thought-provoking things. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-koerner/blue-republican_b_886650.html?page=1
No, it IS fair to tax people different rates. Giving everyone the same rules to follow is only fair when the playing field is level to start with. Socioeconomically, the world cannot be further from fair, so saying that it's fair to tax everyone the same does not follow. The rich have special privileges in this country, and the poorest cannot afford a tax rate that will sustain the country. It would be unfair to tax them at the same rate. As an example of that concept, Imagine a man and a woman who are thinking about having a baby. The woman doesn't want one but the man does. Using the conservative idea of treating them both "equally" without thinking about the differences between them, they'd be in a gridlock. Maybe they could flip a coin to decide. But the two people are not really equal in practice. The man never has to sacrifice his body for nine months. He doesn't have to deal with morning sickness, he doesn't have to deal with the mood swings or have to sacrifice his job for maternity leave, and he doesnt have to put his life at risk to deliver the baby. Pregnancy doesn't happen to him. The man is privileged and the woman is at a disadvantage. So to say that both of them should have equal weight isn't truly fair. The woman should have more weight because it hurts her more than it does him. Now, if the baby is already here, then they're both equally responsible and they can both have an equal say again. If the example isn't clear enough, the tax rate that would be appropraite for a super-rich person would not be appropriate for a poor person. They're hurt a lot more for it. It means not getting enough to eat and falling behind on their rent payments. For a rich person it means not getting that 4th swimming pool. Hardly fair to tax them the same rate. Fairness is more than just about giving the same rules to the different kinds of people. You have to look at the consequences and the whole picture before determining that something is fair.
Loaded question. First off, very, very few liberal/progressives actually advocate "wealth distribution" as he puts it. That, like "Government run health care", is one of those Fox news 'Well here's what it really is!' buzzwords those people are so very fond of. A GPA is a direct result of efforts and intelligence; dumb and lazy people fail and smart, hardworking people succeed and go farther. Money works a number of different ways; you can work hard for it, you can win the lottery, you can be handed a cushy job without meriting it based on nepotism, you can outright steal it. For adding that little jab about "Well maybe when they're in the real world, they'll learn the deal" they don't give any thought to the fact that often, lazier, less productive people will get as much and sometimes more money than someone who slaves day in and day out for stupid reasons. There seems to be this idea that "Well, I have the money, I obviously earned it, and they don't have any, that must be because they're lazy freeloaders, maybe if they got off their asses we wouldn't be in this position to begin with! mush, fuckers!" is moronic, since even if we disregard that argument completely, the last big shitstorm over "unfairly taxing the rich" was about closing loopholes. Not adding more taxes to them. Making it so they can't get out of paying taxes already on the books. Few people will argue that people who have money have an obligation to rich up the slack, but to insist that every rich person earned that cash from back breaking work and sacrifice and, as a show of respect, shouldn't have to do what the rest of us peons do by way of paying taxes is total bullshit.
I didn't say every rich person actually earns their money. There's obviously knuckleheads out there who didn't. The GPA example was just a basic loose example of what's happening. I would assume the majority of rich people worked hard in their life to get that money. Just like I assume the majority of people who are poor didn't study hard enough or apply themselves as much as they could earlier in their life, and now they are paying for it by actually having to work really hard to make $8 an hour. But the income tax in general isn't fair. People should be taxed on their property and what they buy, for example, not simply by how much they make. It's plain stealing. And to the people who keep insisting that we need more money to run our country, why is that? Do we need to be spending 1 trillion dollars on the wars overseas every year? Do we need those troops spending money overseas and injecting our money into other economies? Do we need a government so large that it tries to run our lives? Do we need to spend another trillion dollars on the drug wars that haven't amounted to anything besides putting people in jail who committed victimless crimes, which costs around $80k per person per year to accommodate? Do we need a Federal Reserve System that is destroying our dollar? These are some of the many, many problems that are tricking a lot of people into thinking we need to tax citizens more. Taxing more will only aid the corruptness of it all, and it won't stop. Eventually we'll collapse unless something changes. Our government doesn't just need more money to make things ok again.
I've been homeless because a landlord wrongly evicted my family because he wanted someone who could pay higher rent. I have been jobless for 6 months now because my ex-boss at the last minute decided he didn't want to help me keep my job while I moved to LA, and lied to the unemployment people. Welfare doesn't pay the rent, unless you're disabled. For 3 years I've been hearing all of these stories about how hard people are having it, and now I'm experiencing it first-hand. People don't have jobs, jobs give people money, and it usually aint easy (or legal) to pick yourself back up without sacrificing a whoooole lot. That's because... 1. We as a people are not told to think outside the box, or be creative at all, so most people aren't gonna think "Let's start our own business!!!!!" and if they do 2. Starting a business costs money (that they probably don't have) Soooo most likely they will need somebody who has money, or start collecting some bottles and cans, if they can't find themselves a job... Hell, for a month or two, I had more call-backs for game shows and even an audition for Glee, but wouldn't get shit back from jobs that I'm completely qualified for. It's hard out here for a pimp
LOL @ trying to use Fox news to prove a point. They are probably some of the biased news casters on the planet.
Yeah, I know. But it's not Fox News who did the study or really did anything. The student is the one doing the study and presenting the info. It's probably the only good thing I've seen from Fox News for awhile. But we're not here to debate that.
I'm sorry but no, don't start an argument with something so clearly incorrect. The example that followed did not correlate to taxing different rates either. No one said every rich person worked for it, some people inherit everything they have, but most people who have money earned it. LOL @ not mentioning just about every other broadcaster being liberally biased...
yeeeeeeaaaaa but there's a difference between being biased and lying and starting shit and the other ridiculous things that make FOX a joke. If there's a liberal version of Fox News, I'd like to think that we'd all hate them too
I think MSNBC is pretty bad to be honest regarding bias. But like Rocky says at least they don't flat out plant lies like Fox does sometimes. To me, the whole "how many rich people earned their money" argument is beyond irrelevant. I don't care if all rich people had to lose their arms and legs to be rich. They have a ludicrous amount of money that they can spare to help America. Government programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid need to get their money from somewhere. It's not like taxing wealthy Americans more will somehow not make them rich any more. They're still going to be rich, just a little less rich. But it kills me that Warren Buffett seems to be the only rich person that seems to get that. And to the people that say "just taxing more isn't going to fix this economy", I completely agree with that. And I don't like when liberals (more people than politicians) that go out and trying to imply that just taxing is somehow a solution. Spending cuts need to be made as well along with other measures that I probably don't even know about. And I also agree that we need to stop intervening in other countries and we need to stop spending billions of dollars overseas. I'm completely behind the likes of Ron Paul there. And maybe Obama isn't going to be the savior of this country. But I would vote for Kappa before I'd vote for any of these clowns that make up the Republican candidates.
Ron Paul is an economic genius. Not sure what more people want right now. Follow the constitution and all our problems will slowly (some immediately) go away. The problem is that our government won't change without him in there. The status quo will live on until we collapse.
What I respect Ron Paul is that he isn't afraid to actually say what he believes in. That's something that hardly any presidential candidate these days does. And the lack of coverage he gets is plain unfair considering he is placing in the top 3 or so in various polls. Stewart did a funny bit a few weeks ago that basically showed how the media ignores him. Unfortunately, I just can't agree with a lot of Paul's views. Otherwise I'd hop on his bandwagon.
Most of the little coverage he gets is from outlets trying to make him look foolish or they are just plain douchebags to him, but within the last couple weeks they've started to treat him a little more fairly and just let him speak his mind instead of asking him so many questions. There was actually a surprising interview on Fox News (yeah, I know) where Paul basically got to speak about economics and foreign policy for 13 minutes with very little interruption. It's a pretty insightful video into how much this man knows. I'll link it if people are interested. http://video.foxnews.com/v/1133006273001/media-ignoring-ron-paul/?playlist_id=87485
Taxes are not stealing. We are paying for infrastructure to support us that we cannot trust the private sector to handle, at least in the ideal case. If taxes became voluntary then there would be so many free riders of people paying nothing that we could be invaded by a platoon of 100 and be conquered, not to mention the widespread starvation and disease and lack of education that we would have. In case you forgot, we are trillions in debt from people giving too many tax breaks while going out to war. Giving tax breaks while going out on unnecessary wars is just egregiously a terrible idea, both from an economic standpoint and an ethical one. Everybody should feel the weight of war when they wage one, especially businesses that profit from it. At the very least, move taxes back up to where they were before these foolish trickle down clowns ruined it for all of us. Cutting spending is one way, but that may not be fast enough. Taxes should be put back to where they once were. I rather have higher taxes than have no taxes and seeing a gallon of milk cost $2,000 at a grocery store. I'm not sure what to say about Ron Paul. I like his personality a lot. But saying someone is an economic genius before they've implemented any of it is jumping the gun. Economics is as poorly understood and unpredictable as the weather, and economists do nothing more than wave their hands over a pretend crystal ball and try predict the future. And they are about as effective as a real psychic. Which is to say not at all. If you want to presuade me, provide something more than a baseless contradiction. At least provide a counterargument if you're not going to provide a counterexample or refute any of my claims. Or, I have a better idea: actually read my posts instead of skimming them. I was talking about the concept of fairness and how the truth about it is more complicated than it seems, since you don't understand what the word fairness means. Otherwise, you are wasting my time. LOL @ thinking most people with money earned it. Its more to do with your socioeconomical status that you started with, with the addition of how much effort you put in. Many poor people have three jobs and work around the clock with no sleep, and yet they don't have millions of dollars. Their effort doesn't get them anywhere because they can't make enough to offset the costs of living. Does a CEO that makes 3948308 times more than most of their employees do 3948308 times the work of each employee? If no, then why is the gap so large? Since leadership is so hard, I imagine making hundreds of times more is reasonable. But not the extreme degree we're seeing in this country. In Japan, you'd see CEOs in companies in bad times lower their salaries and have lunch in cafeterias designed for their employees. Here, they're just greedy and will take all the money for themselves even as their stupid business decisions destroy it.
I don't even know what to say to that last part. You make it sound like we'd be in an apocalypse, which obviously wouldn't happen. We're talking about just income tax here. Without the any income tax we'd have our same national budget as like 15 or 20 years ago (don't remember exact number, just heard it somewhere lol), then if we stop all these unconstitutional wars we might actually have enough money to get our economy going again. People will have more money, people will be spending more money, life is good. One of our biggest problems is that our money isn't backed by gold so the Federal Reserve just prints it whenever it feels fit, without being held accountable by any laws or power. Also don't know what point you're trying to make here. Are you referring to a free market? Where supply and demand rule the economy and nothing can get out of control like that? Obviously nobody would buy that milk and they'd go out of business if they didn't lower it to something the consumer feels is an appropriate trade. He's been predicting everything that's happened over the last 20 years. Calling him a genius is clearly out of line, but he understands the in's and out's better than probably anyone who has run for president in the last 100 years. What is clear is that if we keep supporting the status quo, some terrible times will be upon us in the near future. Dr. Paul does have a lot of arguable viewpoints, but his stance on foreign policy and economics are nearly flawless for our current situation we're in. Not to mention that he fights for our liberty; something that will be taken away at this current rate. Sure, he won't be the solution for a perfect nation, but he's just trying to get us back to our basic roots. Something our founding fathers laid out plain and simple for us that we totally disregard now. Once we get back on track and flush out our corrupt government, then we can start worrying about smaller details. Electing anyone else for president will just have us idly sitting by for 4 more years waiting for real change to come, hoping we don't totally implode as a nation in that time.
I was firstly referring to what would happen if taxes were voluntary, which is effectively the same as living in an anarchy since a government would never be able to sustain itself. Saying its stealing is being a little melodramatic. I was secondly referring to hyperinflation as a consequence of needing to pay our debts by printing money. I don't know what to think of Ron Paul's gold idea yet, but not being able to pay off our debts by printing money also sounds like it will have painful consequences. Of course, since you bring it up, absurd prices are also the hallmark of monopolies. As it stands, Ron Paul is only person on the conservative ticket I would actually vote for, but I wish he didn't have to pander to the loony-bin conservatives who think Perry or Bachman are ideal leader materials. Obama promised change and was basically a Bush v 2.0, so balls to him.
So far in my years of paying attention to politics, I haven't seen a sliver of evidence suggesting taxes are a bad thing. For the past 10 or whatever years we've had the Bush tax cuts where the rich hardly have to pay anything. And look where we are now. If we had continued the tax laws of the 90's when our economy was growing, our debt wouldn't be as bad as it is right now. One argument I've seen for not taxing the rich is that wealthy people are the so called "job creators." There's never been any data/proof to back that up. Then there's the whole "unconstitutional" thing. To that, I simply ask "why?" And the last argument is that it's "unfair cuz they earned it!!!!1!" To me that's the equivalent of a 1st grader who doesn't want to share his toys. On another note, Ron Paul's foreign policy is pretty damn good. It's what Obama's foreign policy is supposed to be.