Liberals want the Rich to pay more taxes.. Or are they just Clueless?

[tooAlive]

Good of you to be worried about the rich because without you they would only have their lawyers and lobbyists looking out for them!

Very clever way to maneuver around my question.

I'd be in favor of removing government totally from labor/owner negotiations..

How about you?

Absolutely.

Cool.

So you would never support something like what Reagan did with the Air Traffic controllers, right?

Or Matewan..

Hmm. That's a tricky one. In most cases I wouldn't be.

But given the importance of air traffic controllers, and how a shortage of that magnitude would have severe effects, I don't think his administration had much of a choice. At least that's the impression I got from briefly going over the Wiki. I originally didn't know about this.

Unless the private companies affected were able to fire the striking employees themselves; in which case the govt. should have stayed out of it.

And I don't know what Matewan is..

 

[Londoner]

r they are a bit misinformed and don't really know what they're talking about.

The "Fair Share" rhetoric doesn't work.

You need to get some historical perspective.

During the postwar years there were labor and tax policies which tied the wages and benefits of workers to productivity gains. Such that when more money was made from the country's vast productivity engine, workers were given what amounted to a larger slice of the pie. This resulted in a massive consumption economy based on the Fordist principal that a domestic economy succeeds when workers are compensated enough to buy what they produce. (Compensation can take the form of "After Market" policies like the GI Bill, which, by making education more affordable, freed up more money for consumption)

Problem is: the large corporations which started to take control of the GOP in the late 50s didn't want to give workers such a large share of the pie. They wanted cheaper labor. When we were fighting the Cold War, our capitalists saw that workers in freedom-hating nations were producing goods for pennies a day. This is why they wanted American workers to compete with 3rd world workers, the result of which would be a higher return on investment (because of cheaper labor costs, e.g., investors make more when their sneakers are made in Taiwan by dictator-controlled workers making pennies a day and living in hovels).

Walmart, one of the largest contributors to the GOP, gets over 50% of its products manufactured in communist China. (Sorry uncle Milty, Capitalism doesn't want freedom; it wants the labor costs made possible by freedom-hating dictator nations)

So starting with Reagan we began to detach Capital from American Labor, giving investors mobility to flee to the globe's cheapest labor markets. As solid middle class jobs were shipped overseas, a problem arose. How can we sustain middle class consumption - which supports the domestic economy - in the face of lost jobs and lower wages? Answer: credit (debt). Therefore, starting in the 1980s American Families began accumulating massive debt. Indeed, this is when we all started receiving 3 credit cards a week.

As the American capitalists shifted production to freedom-hating communist nations, the American middle class (having lost those jobs) started borrowing more and more to stay a float. It got so bad that poor consumers pawned the last thing left with any value, their homes. Indeed, stating in the late 90s Wall Street invented all these innovative financial vehicles that enabled Americans to increase consumption by leveraging the value of their homes.

Obviously, the system blew up because you cannot replace wages with credit cards for very long.

It's not about fair share. It's about recognizing a deep flaw, namely that the capitalist's drive for lower wages undercuts demand. During the postwar years we addressed this flaw by a number of mechanisms which tied wages/benefits/entitlements to rising productivity. From 1940-1980 when workers produced more, they got more. Reagan dismantled that, saying that the money would naturally trickle down to the workers. Funny thing, right after we bought what Reagan was selling, we watched a 30 year migration of jobs to communist China, which was curiously paralleled by a 30 year expansion of middle class debt to make up for lost jobs and diminished wages.

Again, this has noting to do with "Fair Share". Life isn't fair. It's about the construction of an economy that substitutes wages with credit in order to make room for tax cuts for anti-patriotic capitalists who have shifted manufacturing to the developing world. This is why we learned a new term during the Bush years called "Jobless Recovery", when profits increased rapidly without a corresponding increase of solid American jobs.

It doesn't trickle down to American workers because the capitalist does not want to support a first world labor market. The capitalist doesn't need to invest in the American economy when communist China can give him higher returns w/ oppressed sweatshop laborers living under a dictator.

In order to make up for the jobs/money/prosperity that wasn't trickling down, the American consumer went on a 30 year borrowing binge. (Morning in America brought to you by Master Card, Visa and Amex) Now, after decades of increasing the debt of American families, we don't have enough solvent consumers left to sustain the consumption requirements of the American economy. We've run out of people with room on their credit cards.

(When Reagan gave the upper class cheap labor, and the lower class credit cards (to make up for lost jobs) . . . the system was bound to inch toward a total failure of demand. The game is over. You can't reverse 30 years of undermining solid jobs and hollowing out every program that protected middle class solvency.)

We swallowed poison in 1980

 

[tooAlive]

r they are a bit misinformed and don't really know what they're talking about.

The "Fair Share" rhetoric doesn't work.

You need to get some historical perspective.

During the postwar years there were labor and tax policies which tied the wages and benefits of workers to productivity gains. Such that when more money was made from the country's vast productivity engine, workers were given what amounted to a larger slice of the pie. This resulted in a massive consumption economy based on the Fordist principal that a domestic economy succeeds when workers are compensated enough to buy what they produce. (Compensation can take the form of "After Market" policies like the GI Bill, which, by making education more affordable, freed up more money for consumption)

Problem is: the large corporations which started to take control of the GOP in the late 50s didn't want to give workers such a large share of the pie. They wanted cheaper labor. When we were fighting the Cold War, our capitalists saw that workers in freedom-hating nations were producing goods for pennies a day. This is why they wanted American workers to compete with 3rd world workers, the result of which would be a higher return on investment (because of cheaper labor costs, e.g., investors make more when their sneakers are made in Taiwan by dictator-controlled workers making pennies a day and living in hovels).

Walmart, one of the largest contributors to the GOP, gets over 50% of its products manufactured in communist China. (Sorry uncle Milty, Capitalism doesn't want freedom; it wants the labor costs made possible by freedom-hating dictator nations)

So starting with Reagan we began to detach Capital from American Labor, giving investors mobility to flee to the globe's cheapest labor markets. As solid middle class jobs were shipped overseas, a problem arose. How can we sustain middle class consumption - which supports the domestic economy - in the face of lost jobs and lower wages? Answer: credit (debt). Therefore, starting in the 1980s American Families began accumulating massive debt. Indeed, this is when we all started receiving 3 credit cards a week.

As the American capitalists shifted production to freedom-hating communist nations, the American middle class (having lost those jobs) started borrowing more and more to stay a float. It got so bad that the poor consumer hawked and pawned the last thing left with any value, their homes. Indeed, stating in the late 90s Wall Street invented all these different financial vehicles that enabled Americans to increase consumption by leveraging the value of their homes.

Obviously, the system blew up because you cannot replace wages with credit cards.

It's not about fair share. It's about recognizing a deep flaw, namely that the capitalist's drive for lower wages undercuts demand. During the postwar years we addressed this flaw by a number of mechanisms which tied wages/benefits/entitlements to rising productivity. Reagan dismantled that, saying that the profits would naturally trickle down to solid jobs and benefits. Funny thing, right after we bought what Reagan was selling, we watched a 30 year migration of jobs to communist China, which was curiously paralleled by a 30 year expansion of middle class debt to make up for lost jobs and diminished wages.

Again, this has noting to do with "Fair Share". Life isn't fair. It's about the construction of an economy that substitutes wages with credit in order to make room for tax cuts for anti-patriotic capitalists who have shifted manufacturing to the developing world. This is why we learned a new term during the Bush years called "Jobless Recovery", when profits grew staggeringly on top without a corresponding increase of solid American jobs.

It doesn't trickle down because the capitalist does not want to support a first world labor market. The capitalist doesn't need to invest in the American economy when communist China can give him higher returns w/ oppressed sweatshop laborers living under a dictator.

In order to make up for the jobs/money/prosperity that wasn't trickling down, the American consumer went on a 30 year borrowing binge. (Morning in America brought to you by Master Card, Visa and Amex) Now, after decades of increasing the debt of American families, we don't have enough solvent consumers left to sustain the consumption requirements of the American economy. We've run out of people with room on their credit cards.

(When Reagan gave the upper class cheap labor, and the lower class credit cards (to make up for lost jobs) . . . the system was bound to inch toward a total failure of demand)

We swallowed poison in 1980

Thanks you for the insight, you've added a very valid perspective to the discussion.

What would you say would be a solution to our problem? Would raising taxes on the wealthy help bring labor back into the US, or would it drive capitalists to outsource even more to recuperate the additional money spent on taxes?

It seems to me that the better solution would be to help raise the standard of living in other 3rd world countries with the hopes of driving the price of labor overseas to something more comparable to what we have here. Although that may be a little far fetched.

 

[Ernie S.]

If you think it fair for Mitt Romney to pay a lower tax rate than a plumber, or a bus driver or even his own secretary then you have a different idea of fair than most, in fact, the vast majority of Americans.

You do understand that different types of income are taxed differently, right?

Most of Mitt's money comes from capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate than regular income from a job.

But if you asked me, I think everyone should pay the same flat tax rate. No loopholes. H.R. 25 to be exact.

Of course I understand how they pay a lower rate! That's the point the wealthy get to call their income something that is then taxed at a lower rate! Clearly unfair, letting them pay less than their fair share!

Can you tell me why Mitt Romney's "share" in 2011 was $1,900,000.00 plus God knows how much in state and local taxes and a guy with 4 kids in school and a $50 K/year job pay under $10K?

Mitt uses virtually no government services except roads, fire and police, same as everyone else, but our 50K guy is using at least twice what he is paying in in public school tuition only.

 

[Londoner]

What would you say would be a solution to our problem? Would raising taxes on the wealthy help bring labor back into the US, or would it drive capitalists to outsource even more to recuperate the additional money spent on taxes?

It seems to me that the better solution would be to help raise the standard of living in other 3rd world countries with the hopes of driving the price of labor overseas to something more comparable to what we have here. Although that may be a little far fetched.

I think you'd have to be very careful on the revenue side, as you say. Perhaps trend slowly back to the Postwar model where you had "demand" centered policies, many of them "After Market" like the GI Bill. [That is, restore programs that focused on middle class solvency so that consumers, in the face of frozen wages and lost jobs, could continue to consume without the dangerous expansion of credit].

I think any solution would involve ramping down the current subsidy and bailout machine that has developed since we allowed corporations to control policy though lobbying, regulatory capture and election funding. [We don't want a situation where energy policy is being decided behind closed doors on the eve of the Iraq War. We want more voices in that room, like somebody who advocates that the truck be the last part of the shipping journey rather than the whole journey. That is, we don't want special interests that benefit from maximum petroleum dependence shaping policy. This obviously plays into a broader problem whereby Big Corporations collude with Big Government to maximize their take from the taxpayer. We've created no-bid culture with a revolving door between the Senate and Health Insurance Lobbying - this makes it easier for companies like Eli Lilly to commit the taxpayer to above market drug costs for entitlement programs.]

I think you would need an "all of the above" solution that gets into the minutia of anti-trust law. Remember: Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Act, which contributed to an era of mega-mergers. Now, when a company doesn't want to lower their prices because of a competitor, he merely buys the competitor. You have one health care provider in most of Iowa - so they can raise their rates without being disciplined by the market. You have situations in California where Cox cable and Charter Internet agree to divide up districts so they don't have to lower prices because of competition.

There are a lot of things that can be done to facilitate competition and remove the paid-for monopolies that have been produced by the post-Reagan lobbying state (where business was put in charge of Washington).

 

[hazlnut]

Everyone interviewed here agreed wholeheartedly that the rich should pay a bit more in taxes. Their "fair share." But none of them actually knew what the "fair share" actually was, what the current tax rates were, or what the proposed tax rates for the rich were going to be.

Many of them guesstimated a much lower percentage than the CURRENT top marginal tax rates.

So next time a liberal tells you "America has spoken" and wants the rich to pay their share, remember they are a bit misinformed and don't really know what they're talking about.

Supporters of Tax Increase on Rich Don't Know What Rich Are Currently Paying - YouTube

Wow, in just 4 minutes you were able to get an accurate poling sample.

"Everyone"...