The Dude (03-05-2013)
The Dude (03-05-2013)
I'm Watermark (03-04-2013)
Look, ILA, I don't know all the specifics pertaining to how the US tax code relates to other countries, but I can tell you this: Nobody who actually cares about class disparity and class poverty sees progressive taxation as the primary solution. We just don't. What we want is a cocktail of policies containing things like free higher education, a co-op based economy, and localized government structures.
Rune (03-05-2013)
So you want humans who are at the top 1% to come up with policies to help the poor?
Have you ever asked yourself why liberalism has failed? Do you really think we don't have enough transfer payments from "the rich"?
How much of their money do you want to take?
Look I am not arguing that the top 1% like Buffett and Gates aren't manipulating the political system for their own gain at the expense of the rest of the country. They are. I am arguing that it is crony capitalism that is responsible. They are rent seekers and they could not survive in a free market and a moral government following the laws laid forth in the US Constitution.
For some reason liberals labor under the delusion that some wise bureaucrat is going to make better decisions for all of society than hundreds of millions of individual decisions.
It matters not to you all of the evidence of your failed ideology. It matters not that all of the most despotic regimes of the last century came about by claiming to be champions of the poor. You persist in pushing this failed ideology that is liberalism/socialism/progressivism. You are either willfully ignorant of the past or despotism is what you seek
I'm Watermark (03-05-2013)
Demand change. As history has shown, over and over, a leader is going to come along and the people will follow him/her to what may be their detriment. We don't know but when someone is drowning they'll grab the life jacket regardless of who offers it. The worse the situation becomes the less people will scrutinize the person throwing the "jacket".
The point being the sooner change is implemented the better off we'll all be.
"May your reality be as pleasant as mine."
I'm Watermark (03-05-2013)
Or, as I mentioned in msg #19, history also shows excessive wealth at one end and excessive poverty at the other does not end well for anyone. As to "hundreds of millions of individual decisions" that's how society operated from the beginning of time. Certainly since 1776 in the US. until the government had to step in after the Depression. Family, business, country.....nothing can be run efficiently with everyone "doing their own thing". There has to be some overview.
"May your reality be as pleasant as mine."
Taxation. Or the government could ration products.
Take the housing boom, for example. The goal was to lower rates and make qualification easier so poor people could buy homes. Great idea. The problem is the wealthy took advantage of that, as well, and bought multiple homes resulting in fewer homes for the poor so more homes were built until there were too many. Entire subdivisions left empty. The plan could have been limited to first time home buyers. That way, regardless of how much money one has they can not access that plan. They can not hoard houses.
"May your reality be as pleasant as mine."
The government did not "have to step in".
There was a depression in the 20s that was over quickly because the government lowered taxes and reduced spending. You won't hear about it because it runs counter to the big government ideology you espouse.
The government should have stayed back but FDR didn't want to let a "good crisis go to waste" so he meddled. It is a fact that FDRs actions not only lengthened the depression but made it deeper.
Why do rely on bureaucrats to care about you? Where does this faith come from when all evidence shows them to fail time after time?
I'm Watermark (03-05-2013)
So how much of their wealth should the gobblement confiscate?what percentage? Should someone only be allowed to attain a certain net worth? Who decides what that number is?
So the new spin is that it was rich people who could afford their payments that brought about the housing bust it wasn't people who defaulted? It wasn't government intervention?
You price my point. A program designed by someone like you failed miserably because you never, ever, ever think of in intended consequences. The net effect is you and your ilk trash our economy.
We would be better off if you stopped trying to make a difference.
I always find it interesting that those who claim to champion the cause if the poor like yourself claim to be "rich". What if you just satisfied your own conscience with your own resources and left the rest of us alone? You know freedom?
I'm Watermark (03-05-2013)
I'm Watermark (03-05-2013)
Rune (03-05-2013)
I read and understood every word. You believe that more centralized planning by your betters will fix it. You want "policy" solutions. You believe there is some policy that is heretofore unseen in the modern world that will eliminate suffering and poverty if only we could just get along.
If you felt what I said was an "attack" then you are obviously get butthurt very easily and we should cease and desist
I'm Watermark (03-05-2013)
Rune (03-05-2013)
A sad commentary on we, as a people, and our viewpoint of our freedom can be summed up like this. We have liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, yet those very people look at Constitutionalists as radical and extreme.................so those liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans must believe that the constitution is radical and extreme.
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