[POLL] - Liberals, how much is a "fair share?" - Taxes

[kaz]

Today, the top 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all income taxes, the top 5% pay 60% of all income taxes, and the bottom 50% pay zero.



That may be our objective, but we're not getting very far with it are we? Did you see the stats above? They come from the IRS by the way, and by taxpayers, that means that people who earn too little to file aren't counted, which means as a percentage of AMERICANS it's even more skewed than that.

I have a question for you. So let's take the IRS stat that the top 1% of all earners pay 40% of all taxes. What would you guess the percent of all income they earn is. According to the IRS.

In 2007, the top 1% had 34.7% of the wealth, I'm sure that it's more today, the best measure of economic security, Wealth inequality in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and paid 36.73% of the income tax.

They have most of the intelligence when it comes to making the money. The goal "should" be aimed at educating the lower class, so they become capable of making more.

Right?

The problem is that most of the education is coming from government, who is completely not educating them to be self sufficient.

 

[kaz]

If I (and people like me) don't choose to live my life this way, then people who want to work won't have jobs and parasites like you won't have a host. So I'd pay attention to where your bread is buttered...

Now you say that you are a job creator. Who creates the wealth that is sold to your customers? Who sells it to your customers? Who delivers it to your customers? Your customers create jobs because the employees who use your means satisfy their needs.

And the materials those employees are using to "create the wealth" . . . are they just pulling those out of their asses when they visit the employee lavatory? Or did the employer you seem convinced does nothing purchase those materials with HIS money? The tools and machinery the employees use . . . where did THOSE come from? The building they work in, and the utilities they use, who provides those? The trucks they drive to deliver the goods, where did THEY come from? The record-keeping necessary to keep the business running and legal, who does that?

The employer creates jobs by providing all the things necessary to create a venue in which the employees can then exchange their labor for money.

Agreed. And employees have to be managed and trained, processes have to be created for them. And if you don't do that, they'll run the company into the ground. I'm not saying that good employees don't help, they do. But even the good ones need the environment provided for them. They may run processes well and even improve them. But put 10 together in a room and tell them to create a company and they won't even start doing that.

 

[Foxfyre]

Those who deplore wealth inequity too often also ignore the reasons for it. It is not due to the wealthy taking more than their 'fair share'. It IS related to the incentives and encouragement and freedom afforded to the poor to become unpoor.

. . . .Property is a legal concept, whereas wealth is an economic concept. The two are often confused, but they should be kept quite clearly distinct. The one refers to a set of rights, the other to how people value such rights. The same legal claim to property may yield great wealth today and none tomorrow. Market exchanges change the values of property claims continuously, as Ludwig Lachmann explained clearly in his important essay on “The Market Economy and the Distribution of Wealth.”[4] . . . .


. . . .What is responsible for wealth inequality is a very complicated topic. It seems that, in market-based economies, education drives much of the inequality. Thus, to get rid of the inequality, we could stop people from acquiring knowledge. It’s clear that’s not the kind of direction Hassoun would want to go. (At least, I hope not.) She’s concerned about people suffering in poverty.

Bryan Caplan posed scenarios according to which people in the United States might be responsible for the plight of the poor of Haiti. Hassoun affirmed in her response, “I think that the current distribution of property rights globally is very unjust because it leaves people unable to meet their basic needs.” I think that she missed the point. Caplan focused on how people in wealthy countries could act to improve the lot of people in poor countries, and I agree wholeheartedly with what he says. But it’s really only a part of the problem. The people of Haiti are poor because they have been governed for generations by a succession of kleptocrats and psychopaths.

In the course of their histories, of course, most countries have suffered from such rulers. Those that have succeeded in limiting their power and thus liberating creative activity have increased their wealth and prosperity. I encourage people interested in this issue to consider the treatment of the causes of prosperity in Deirdre McCloskey’s remarkable book Bourgeois Dignity, which considers all the accounts I’d ever heard of (and some I hadn’t) and measures them against the enormous wealth explosion of the past two centuries. Economic freedom and respect for entrepreneurship are the only explanations that emerge as capable of explaining what she calls “the great fact.”
Some Thoughts on Inequality of Wealth and the Moral Claims We May Make on Each Other | Cato Unbound

Income inequality in the USA goes up and down over the decades but is really not any more pronounced now than it was when the country was founded. The Founders themselves were no doubt in the 1% category. And yet they created a system that allowed everybody a shot at becoming wealthy.

Freedom does not seem to affect wealth equality. But freedom has a huge affect on the ability of the poor to be less poor. From the same link as above.:

 

[PMZ]

You could still have your arms, and your legs, or your rights; but you would still lack sincerity.

What????

You heard me.

How do you speak of rights, when you are willing to bring those who prosper to their knees? What good is the right to prosper when you make it difficult to? Why is prosperity in the highest degree such a bad thing? Why is it bad when someone has the upper hand? You want to squeeze altruism from a man, just as you would water from a turnip. The man who owns the store who employs the the employees got there from the same hard work that he accused of not doing. He isn't "nothing more than a landlord" he worked for his living just as you did, and you begrudge him the right to prosper? So what if he prospers more than you? Nobody should be made prosper the same, but at their own pace. This type of economic communalism is disturbing. If you are poor, strive to be rich, if you are rich, strive to help the poor.

You hypocrite.

You are merely repeating conservative media cult dogma. Mouthing the lyrics that took over your mind. Extremism.

The US has practiced both capitalist and socialist economics from the beginning. Both worked fine in their place. We accepted the danger of capitalism by our confidence that it's risks could be regulated, the biggest one being that the fact that there are no free markets anymore would lead to extreme wealth distribution towards the wealthy. We did that because we knew from experience that the product of extreme wealth distribution always will be unstable third world banana republics with the wealthy taking all of the political power as well as all of the wealth.

We are there now. By any measure of wealth inequality. How did we get here? Because the wealthy bought our way here. They paid for your mind and your vote by giving you a cartoon simple black and white picture of a complex world which you published above. They also gave you $17,000,000,000,000 in debt that they generated trying for all of the marbles.

The middle class is our economy both for supply and demand. Every time a CEO gets a $50,000,000 paycheck for the wealth created by workers doing their jobs despite his "leadership" the country gets more broken. That $50,000,000 is money that doesn't buy the groceries and cars and houses and school taxes that it would if it was used to pay middle class wealth creators, it goes to buy power.

Business is broken but the wealthy buy airtime to tell you that government is broken. Why? Because the power of democratic government of, by, and for the people is the one thing standing between the wealthy and all of the marbles.

Our predesessors built a country from the sweat of their brow. It's our responsibility to pass it on to our children. The Great Recession was the first major clue that we are failing them and if things don't continue to turn around we'll have nothing to pass on. At least, 80% of us won't. The other 20% will pass on enough money to buy the wealth created by others for a few generations. Then lights out.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I do not have an agenda. That is the exclusive province of liberals.

I have an agenda - I freely admit it.

Here is my agenda;

Transcript of the Constitution of the United States - Official Text

 

[Uncensored2008]

Who would possibly disagree with that. The issue is whether freedom comes from our Constitution and democracy or from Republican plutocracy.

You've never read the Constitution, Jake. You have no clue what is in it.

 

[kaz]

Our predesessors built a country from the sweat of their brow. It's our responsibility to pass it on to our children. The Great Recession was the first major clue that we are failing them

A recession brought on by massive growth in government spending and belligerent policies towards banks forcing them to make bad loans will be solved by more government. Gotcha.

 

[PMZ]

right... what alternative are you proposing?

Capital gains should be taxed at the same or a greater rate than income from work.

It's sounds like we agree. Just lower income tax to a flat 10% and put the gov't on a SERIOUS diet! Then we will have it licked, right??

You mean put the government on a serious diet like Europe did so that we could share their success in recovery from the Great Recession? Fortunately most of us aren't that stupid.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Wealth that we have is the sum total of what we create.

The basis of capitalism is wealth redistribution. The theory is that that is what motivates people.

The problem that led us away from capitalism is that we no longer reward people in proportion to the wealth that they create. We reward people in proportion to the wealth that they have.

If only you had made it to 4th grade, Jake....

You don't grasp what the words mean.

Capitalism is simply the free market where individuals or cooperatives can trade. You can trade goods, you can trade knowledge, or you can trade labor. What these are worth is what another is willing to pay you for them - no more, no less.

Capitalism is the basis of freedom - and men cannot be free without it. It is the proposition that you have the right to trade to others what they value in exchange for what you value.

 

[PMZ]

The highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world is "fairly low." Only to you comrade. We're just lucky you let us keep anything at all...

You're lucky we don't have regular show trials for corporate douchebags... but that's just me, man.

We should start with the "show trials" for the real criminals in this country, politicians. Your blinders that you believe the liars is absolutely required for your blind, ovine love of the Democratic party.

Is this when you tell us that government killed millions of American jobs by recruiting cheap foreign workers here or sending jobs there? Our are you going to repeat the fable that Barney Franks built the housing boom and bust and collapse of Wall Street. How about the one about all of Bush's blunders lost their influence on Jan 19, 2001? Maybe Bernie Madoff was a secret government plant in the business world.

If people like you can run a successful business must be anybody can do it.

 

[kaz]

Capital gains should be taxed at the same or a greater rate than income from work.

It's sounds like we agree. Just lower income tax to a flat 10% and put the gov't on a SERIOUS diet! Then we will have it licked, right??

You mean put the government on a serious diet like Europe did so that we could share their success in recovery from the Great Recession? Fortunately most of us aren't that stupid.

Europe's "serious diet" was the equivalent of putting less butter on their potato chips. That socialist countries didn't rebound is an argument for nothing.

 

[PMZ]

The desire to be a free man is in fact a higher life form than taking pride from seeking dependency and the use of force to get it.

Who would possibly disagree with that. The issue is whether freedom comes from our Constitution and democracy or from Republican plutocracy.

The people who wrote the Constitution did not think freedom came from the Constitution. You've made clear you have no interest in understanding what the Constitution is.

What's funny in a multiply ironic way is your use of the phrase "republican plutocracy."

Besides that you don't know what republican means

- the founders were republican
- the constitution is republican
- the founders were overwhelmingly the wealthy
- the founders set up a system to protect liberty for all <<<--- hint to the first point in the post
- it's actually democrats and liberalism who are destroying that.

What a post you wrote, outstanding!

The founders debated whether power should be centralized or dispersed among the states as in Europe. The Federalists won. The Constitution prevents regulation in certain specific areas of life defined by the Bill of Rights. They didn't promise anyone anarchy. The founders were very specific about how government would maintain alligiance to the Constitution. Your name wasn't mentioned.

So we have what they founded. You would prefer something else. Power to the people like you, the hell with everyone else.

Sorry King George. Your kind was evicted.

 

[PMZ]

If I (and people like me) don't choose to live my life this way, then people who want to work won't have jobs and parasites like you won't have a host. So I'd pay attention to where your bread is buttered...

Now you say that you are a job creator. Who creates the wealth that is sold to your customers? Who sells it to your customers? Who delivers it to your customers? Your customers create jobs because the employees who use your means satisfy their needs.

I already addressed this. If anyone on my staff leaves, I can get a raft of resumes to replace them. The hardest to replace are my managers and senior staff by the way, the ones closes to being me. The rest are just an inconvenience to hire and train a replacement. If I leave, the jobs go away. People who do what I do, particularly with our belligerent government trying to trip us every step of the way, are few and far between.

So, I risk my pile, set up a company, deal with personnel issues, finance, the government. Create processes, hire the right people, fire the wrong people. If we go broke lose my pile.

But the actual work is done by endlessly replaceable people.

And you're arguing the credit goes to the latter. Got it.

Isn't slavery grand? No wonder business is holding back America's economic recovery. The poorer the economy, the cheaper slaves are. And with modern slavery, you don't have to even pay the people creating your wealth enough for food.

 

[PMZ]

In 2007, the top 1% had 34.7% of the wealth, I'm sure that it's more today, the best measure of economic security, Wealth inequality in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and paid 36.73% of the income tax.

They have most of the intelligence when it comes to making the money. The goal "should" be aimed at educating the lower class, so they become capable of making more.

Right?

The problem is that most of the education is coming from government, who is completely not educating them to be self sufficient.

In Europe education is a partnership between business and government. We could do it that way here too except who wants educated slaves? In fact, you, I imagine, are still a little put out about educated women too.

Barefoot, dumb, and pregnant. America's future under Republicans.

 

[PMZ]

Now you say that you are a job creator. Who creates the wealth that is sold to your customers? Who sells it to your customers? Who delivers it to your customers? Your customers create jobs because the employees who use your means satisfy their needs.

And the materials those employees are using to "create the wealth" . . . are they just pulling those out of their asses when they visit the employee lavatory? Or did the employer you seem convinced does nothing purchase those materials with HIS money? The tools and machinery the employees use . . . where did THOSE come from? The building they work in, and the utilities they use, who provides those? The trucks they drive to deliver the goods, where did THEY come from? The record-keeping necessary to keep the business running and legal, who does that?

The employer creates jobs by providing all the things necessary to create a venue in which the employees can then exchange their labor for money.

Agreed. And employees have to be managed and trained, processes have to be created for them. And if you don't do that, they'll run the company into the ground. I'm not saying that good employees don't help, they do. But even the good ones need the environment provided for them. They may run processes well and even improve them. But put 10 together in a room and tell them to create a company and they won't even start doing that.

One of the most compelling arguments for aristocracy that I've seen. You Wouldhave done well at Versailles or in the court of King Charles. Oh, they all got booted didn't they.

I just wish that I was a competitor of yours. The first that I'd do is hire away all of the people supporting you and watch you fall on your face.

 

[Foxfyre]

Our predesessors built a country from the sweat of their brow. It's our responsibility to pass it on to our children. The Great Recession was the first major clue that we are failing them

A recession brought on by massive growth in government spending and belligerent policies towards banks forcing them to make bad loans will be solved by more government. Gotcha.

The whole 'fair share' concept is flawed when 'taxing the rich more' is looked at as the way to fix the current economic problems of the country. Evenmoreso when those proposing it think the government needs to be even bigger and cost more money.

But as for recession and depression:

Top Five Causes of the Great Depression

1. Stock Market Crash of 1929
Many believe erroneously that the stock market crash that occurred on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 is one and the same with the Great Depression. In fact, it was one of the major causes that led to the Great Depression. Two months after the original crash in October, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars. Even though the stock market began to regain some of its losses, by the end of 1930, it just was not enough and America truly entered what is called the Great Depression.

2. Bank Failures
Throughout the 1930s over 9,000 banks failed. Bank deposits were uninsured and thus as banks failed people simply lost their savings. Surviving banks, unsure of the economic situation and concerned for their own survival, stopped being as willing to create new loans. This exacerbated the situation leading to less and less expenditures.

3. Reduction in Purchasing Across the Board
With the stock market crash and the fears of further economic woes, individuals from all classes stopped purchasing items. This then led to a reduction in the number of items produced and thus a reduction in the workforce. As people lost their jobs, they were unable to keep up with paying for items they had bought through installment plans and their items were repossessed. More and more inventory began to accumulate. The unemployment rate rose above 25% which meant, of course, even less spending to help alleviate the economic situation.

4. American Economic Policy with Europe
As businesses began failing, the government created the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930 to help protect American companies. This charged a high tax for imports thereby leading to less trade between America and foreign countries along with some economic retaliation.

5. Drought Conditions
While not a direct cause of the Great Depression, the drought that occurred in the (midwest) in 1930 was of such proportions that many could not even pay their taxes or other debts and had to sell their farms for no profit to themselves. The area was nicknamed "The Dust Bowl." This was the topic of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Great Depression - Top Five Causes of the Great Depression

And why did the Depression go on for so long? In addition to long range affects as listed above. . . .

A year before the bottom of the Great Depression, the Revenue Act of 1932 increased the top marginal federal tax rate on personal income from 25 percent to 63 percent, increased the corporate tax rate from 12 percent to 13.75 percent, and doubled the estate tax rate. The Revenue Act of 1936 further increased the top marginal tax rate on personal income to 79 percent and the rate on undistributed corporate profits to 42 percent. These two revenue acts increased federal tax rates more than in any other peacetime period and extended the length of the Great Depression by substantially weakening the incentive to work, save, invest, and increase productivity. . . .

. . . . The trade and labor policies of the 1930s were designed to maintain the prices of products and labor services, usually at the expense of the amounts supplied. Other policies had the same objectives and effects. The 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act authorized cartels to maintain prices; until this act was declared unconstitutional in 1935, for example, members of these cartels were subject to fines for discounting. The most egregious of such policies was the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933; until this act was declared unconstitutional in 1936, this act authorized payments to farmers to reduce their acreage under cultivation. In effect, these policies established a floor under prices that prevented many product and labor markets from clearing, given the decline in nominal demand. These policies were an important reason why total output did not recover to the 1929 level until 1939, and the unemployment rate at the end of this decade was 17.2 percent.

. . . .One other policy of both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations was a substantial increase in federal expenditures for public infrastructure, especially hydroelectric facilities. These programs did not reduce total output but they were clearly not effective, given the combination of other policies, in reducing the depth or duration of the Great Depression. The government of Japan enacted a substantially larger public infrastructure program in the 1990s, also with no effect on ending what turned out to be a decade of very low economic growth. A major provision of President Obama&#8217;s fiscal stimulus proposal, of course, is a substantial increase in federal expenditures for public infrastructure. Fed Chairman Bernanke was correct to observe recently that &#8220;Fiscal actions are unlikely to promote a lasting recovery unless they are accompanied by strong measures to further stabilize and strengthen the financial system.&#8221;
How to Turn a Recession into a Depression | Cato Institute

Those with the ability to read and comprehend will almost certainly see parallels in this and current policy, both that already implemented and that which is proposed.

 

[PMZ]

Those who deplore wealth inequity too often also ignore the reasons for it. It is not due to the wealthy taking more than their 'fair share'. It IS related to the incentives and encouragement and freedom afforded to the poor to become unpoor.

. . . .Property is a legal concept, whereas wealth is an economic concept. The two are often confused, but they should be kept quite clearly distinct. The one refers to a set of rights, the other to how people value such rights. The same legal claim to property may yield great wealth today and none tomorrow. Market exchanges change the values of property claims continuously, as Ludwig Lachmann explained clearly in his important essay on “The Market Economy and the Distribution of Wealth.”[4] . . . .


. . . .What is responsible for wealth inequality is a very complicated topic. It seems that, in market-based economies, education drives much of the inequality. Thus, to get rid of the inequality, we could stop people from acquiring knowledge. It’s clear that’s not the kind of direction Hassoun would want to go. (At least, I hope not.) She’s concerned about people suffering in poverty.

Bryan Caplan posed scenarios according to which people in the United States might be responsible for the plight of the poor of Haiti. Hassoun affirmed in her response, “I think that the current distribution of property rights globally is very unjust because it leaves people unable to meet their basic needs.” I think that she missed the point. Caplan focused on how people in wealthy countries could act to improve the lot of people in poor countries, and I agree wholeheartedly with what he says. But it’s really only a part of the problem. The people of Haiti are poor because they have been governed for generations by a succession of kleptocrats and psychopaths.

In the course of their histories, of course, most countries have suffered from such rulers. Those that have succeeded in limiting their power and thus liberating creative activity have increased their wealth and prosperity. I encourage people interested in this issue to consider the treatment of the causes of prosperity in Deirdre McCloskey’s remarkable book Bourgeois Dignity, which considers all the accounts I’d ever heard of (and some I hadn’t) and measures them against the enormous wealth explosion of the past two centuries. Economic freedom and respect for entrepreneurship are the only explanations that emerge as capable of explaining what she calls “the great fact.”
Some Thoughts on Inequality of Wealth and the Moral Claims We May Make on Each Other | Cato Unbound

Income inequality in the USA goes up and down over the decades but is really not any more pronounced now than it was when the country was founded. The Founders themselves were no doubt in the 1% category. And yet they created a system that allowed everybody a shot at becoming wealthy.

Freedom does not seem to affect wealth equality. But freedom has a huge affect on the ability of the poor to be less poor. From the same link as above.:

You make it clear with every post how entitled you feel to the truth. Unfortunately, the universe disagrees.

From Income inequality in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Studies indicate the source of the widening gap (sometimes called the Great Divergence) has not been gender inequality, which has declined in the US over the last several decades,[12] nor inequality between black and white Americans, which has stagnated during that time,[13] nor has the gap between the poor and middle class been the major cause—though it has grown.[14] Most of the growth has been between the middle class and top earners, with the disparity becoming more extreme the further one goes up in the income distribution.[15] Upward redistribution of income is responsible for about 43% of the projected Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years.[16] The Brookings Institution said in 2013 that income inequality was increasing and becoming permanent, reducing social mobility in the US.[17]"

This paragraph would make a good epitaph for America in the unlikely event that Republicans ever get re-elected.

 

[Foxfyre]

PMZ, the master of the non sequitur.

But to add more perspective:

Income inequality is the wrong focus for government policy. After all, if we doubled the income of every American tomorrow, inequality would actually increase -- but we would also lift a lot of Americans out of poverty.

In the context of deficit reduction, that means we should keep this goal in mind: not punishing the rich, but reducing poverty. And we know that in the long run, the best way to reduce poverty is to create more jobs and opportunity. Too many think of the economy as a fixed pie, and the role of government is to divide up the slices of that pie. If one person gets a bigger portion of pie, others of necessity get smaller pieces.

But in reality the size of the pie is not fixed. We can pursue policies that grow a bigger pie, allowing a bigger slice for everyone. Conversely, we can shrink the pie, meaning everyone gets less. And unfortunately, if the pie shrinks, those without skills and connections in society -- the poor -- are likely to end up with little more than crumbs.

And history also shows that government programs and redistribution do a surprisingly poor job of reducing poverty, especially when compared to economic growth. For instance, at the start of the 20th century more than three-quarters of Americans were poor by most definitions. By 1965, that had been reduced to less than 20 percent. That happened not because of government redistribution but because of the phenomenal growth of the American economy. More than $15 trillion in social welfare spending since then has done little to further reduce poverty.

As we look for ways to reduce the deficit, we should avoid policies like raising taxes that will discourage economic growth and job creation. Instead, we should recognize that an ever-growing and more expensive government is a burden that will ultimately reduce growth and make it harder for the poor to move up the income ladder. . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...lity-is-the-wrong-focus-for-government-policy

 

[PMZ]

Our predesessors built a country from the sweat of their brow. It's our responsibility to pass it on to our children. The Great Recession was the first major clue that we are failing them

A recession brought on by massive growth in government spending and belligerent policies towards banks forcing them to make bad loans will be solved by more government. Gotcha.

The whole 'fair share' concept is flawed when 'taxing the rich more' is looked at as the way to fix the current economic problems of the country. Evenmoreso when those proposing it think the government needs to be even bigger and cost more money.

But as for recession and depression:

Top Five Causes of the Great Depression

1. Stock Market Crash of 1929
Many believe erroneously that the stock market crash that occurred on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 is one and the same with the Great Depression. In fact, it was one of the major causes that led to the Great Depression. Two months after the original crash in October, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars. Even though the stock market began to regain some of its losses, by the end of 1930, it just was not enough and America truly entered what is called the Great Depression.

2. Bank Failures
Throughout the 1930s over 9,000 banks failed. Bank deposits were uninsured and thus as banks failed people simply lost their savings. Surviving banks, unsure of the economic situation and concerned for their own survival, stopped being as willing to create new loans. This exacerbated the situation leading to less and less expenditures.

3. Reduction in Purchasing Across the Board
With the stock market crash and the fears of further economic woes, individuals from all classes stopped purchasing items. This then led to a reduction in the number of items produced and thus a reduction in the workforce. As people lost their jobs, they were unable to keep up with paying for items they had bought through installment plans and their items were repossessed. More and more inventory began to accumulate. The unemployment rate rose above 25% which meant, of course, even less spending to help alleviate the economic situation.

4. American Economic Policy with Europe
As businesses began failing, the government created the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930 to help protect American companies. This charged a high tax for imports thereby leading to less trade between America and foreign countries along with some economic retaliation.

5. Drought Conditions
While not a direct cause of the Great Depression, the drought that occurred in the (midwest) in 1930 was of such proportions that many could not even pay their taxes or other debts and had to sell their farms for no profit to themselves. The area was nicknamed "The Dust Bowl." This was the topic of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Great Depression - Top Five Causes of the Great Depression

And why did the Depression go on for so long? In addition to long range affects as listed above. . . .

A year before the bottom of the Great Depression, the Revenue Act of 1932 increased the top marginal federal tax rate on personal income from 25 percent to 63 percent, increased the corporate tax rate from 12 percent to 13.75 percent, and doubled the estate tax rate. The Revenue Act of 1936 further increased the top marginal tax rate on personal income to 79 percent and the rate on undistributed corporate profits to 42 percent. These two revenue acts increased federal tax rates more than in any other peacetime period and extended the length of the Great Depression by substantially weakening the incentive to work, save, invest, and increase productivity. . . .

. . . . The trade and labor policies of the 1930s were designed to maintain the prices of products and labor services, usually at the expense of the amounts supplied. Other policies had the same objectives and effects. The 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act authorized cartels to maintain prices; until this act was declared unconstitutional in 1935, for example, members of these cartels were subject to fines for discounting. The most egregious of such policies was the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933; until this act was declared unconstitutional in 1936, this act authorized payments to farmers to reduce their acreage under cultivation. In effect, these policies established a floor under prices that prevented many product and labor markets from clearing, given the decline in nominal demand. These policies were an important reason why total output did not recover to the 1929 level until 1939, and the unemployment rate at the end of this decade was 17.2 percent.

. . . .One other policy of both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations was a substantial increase in federal expenditures for public infrastructure, especially hydroelectric facilities. These programs did not reduce total output but they were clearly not effective, given the combination of other policies, in reducing the depth or duration of the Great Depression. The government of Japan enacted a substantially larger public infrastructure program in the 1990s, also with no effect on ending what turned out to be a decade of very low economic growth. A major provision of President Obama’s fiscal stimulus proposal, of course, is a substantial increase in federal expenditures for public infrastructure. Fed Chairman Bernanke was correct to observe recently that “Fiscal actions are unlikely to promote a lasting recovery unless they are accompanied by strong measures to further stabilize and strengthen the financial system.”
How to Turn a Recession into a Depression | Cato Institute

Those with the ability to read and comprehend will almost certainly see parallels in this and current policy, both that already implemented and that which is proposed.

I don't want to startle you but this is 2013, not 1929. No thanks to conservatives but the world is different now. Considerably.

 

[Foxfyre]

PMZ, the master at missing the point made.