The Mystery Of Bernie Sanders Crowds.Did Most Of Them Fail Basic Math?

[rightwinger]

50% tax on the wealthy, that's real fair ~snort~

Eisenhower presided over the biggest boom time in recent history, and he taxed the wealthy at 91% and corporations at 50%.

Eisenhower also was able to fund the interstate highway system and start NASA without going into debt

Since we switched to supply side economics, what have we accomplished?

 

[EverCurious]

(I'm rambling a bit here)

Well lets see, back in the 40s and 50s women were expected to stay home and raise their kids. As such kids were raised "better behaved," not roaming the streets getting in to trouble, and not being "babysat" by social media, gangsters, and drug pushers. By better behaved, I mean they had respect for authority (police, government, managers, employers etc.,) they were raised with a sense of obligation and direction (aka they had a purposeful destiny to live up to,) and they took pride in being "good" people over all (pride in being a better worker, pride in their own success and pride in helping their employer succeed,) so on and so forth. Bottom line, it was a completely different mentality.

In addition we had half the work force at home, thus more jobs open for people and the cost of everything had to be kept lower to accommodate a single income family. Employers were paying "more" (ie at or above a living wage) because there were not as many "good" workers, and the men who did work for them actually cared about their jobs, both because they had a family to feed, and because they had "pride". Also, if I recall right, African Americans and other minorities were paid less because of their race, if they were even allowed to have a "good paying job" at all. So basically we had 1/2 or just over 1/2 the workforce either making rock bottom wages, or not working at all.

Of course today, in addition to having a crap ton more workers looking for jobs, the price of living has adjusted to having a two income family norm, and kids lost their stay at home mom dedication and those lessons about pride and responsibility etc., we also have the whole automation thing (robots work for free) and thus less good jobs available.

As for the cost of government, we didn't have most of these aid social programs, charity was voluntary back in the 40s-50s not a mandatory thing. The federal/military pension thing hadn't hit the fatal tipping point, and we had national pride so things like the space race was something American's /wanted/ to pay into, and of course, probably most importantly the rest of the industrialized world was trashed in WWII so we had /zero/ competition for global dominance, which by proxy means that we were the most stable location for wealthy businesses to invest in.


Ya'll think the solution is to take more money out of the wealthy to pay for whatever, but America quite simply, doesn't have the "benefits" that made such an investment worth it to a wealthy business anymore. The businesses can make just as much profit with far less investment in places like Japan (simply because of population density), at a far cheaper cost for labor, /and/ the Japanese are "good workers" who take a lot of pride in their jobs. Bottom line, we've lost the edge that drew businesses to us, and honestly I don't' think we're going to gain it back, certainly not with the way society in America is trending...

Thing is, many countries have trended more towards "freedom" because of how well it had worked for America; aka the wealthy are not /stuck/ with living in America if they want freedom. Frankly the only reason most wealthy people even stay in America is pride, and the current social trend in this country really chips away at that pride let me tell you. I'd say at least, if not more than, 80% of the wealthy in America right now got there because they have the kind of pride I was talking about above, caring about not only their own success but also that their business succeeds, they're responsible and have a sense of duty, they don't live "frivolous" - not that they don't have nice shit, but I mean that they plan ahead for their financial futures, (which is actually why they get wealthier - not because they are paying workers less or paying less taxes or w/e shit ya'll made up as reasons to "hate" them.) Basically there is a huge gap between the way a wealthy person thinks and the way your average joe thinks.

This "wealth mentality" has some dangerous things for America's "current trending path" attached to it; for example a wealthy business owner facing repeated losses at a particular store, will eventually close that store. They don't usually want to put all those people out of work, but there is a "fatal tipping point" that it simply cannot remain open - a business does not have unlimited credit and unlimited debt ceiling, there is no other choice. A wealthy person will, out of a sense of "belief in a cause, pride, duty, and/or obligation," pay high taxes for national projects, aka the space race, but they will /not/ when those projects lend to a "failure" - so for the wealthy, ya'll talk about social programs, but we're looking at society today and just not seeing it as a "good investment"... Basically ya'll have zero plans to cut spending or "improve" the situation, your intentions are very clearly to take every penny from the wealthy in order to give to those who have zero chance of "bettering" the country.

I do understand helping people, but that isn't what this is anymore - it is 100% hand outs with zero guarantees for /any/ improvement of the country as a whole. We say things like, "we're cool with helping folks get back on their feet, but welfare needs to expire" and stuff like that, then you turn around and say we "hate poor people and have no sympathy" - its a dishonest twisting on the part of dems and socialists and ya'll know it but you do it anyway because "fuck em they're wealthy". We're not stupid, we know free shit always wins out against hard work. So yea, we know damn well where this is headed, and no, we have zero interest in supporting that future... But ya'll will stick with the "they're greedy" catch phrases because that'll get votes, for more free shit. Mean while, the wealthy are thinking "Well this is a lost cause time to cut n run." Not because we're greedy, but because we have a mentality that plans for our financial futures - ie we're not willing to buy the lie and pay for it like your "free shit" voters think (or just say) /they/ would were the situation reversed.

I always laugh when I hear non-wealthy people talking about how much they hate their job and complaining their boss works them too hard and doesn't pay $15/h "living wage", and how much money they'd give away if they had wealth; while they text away on their latest $1k iPhone they had to put on a credit card at 23% interest before hopping into the car they're leasing and trading in every five years, and they pine for a big house with a pool in the back yard and all the fancy shit.

Meanwhile I finish up w/e I was doing and jump into the early 90s model truck we own, we'd bought it for the kids, but the used truck we'd bought for me has a bad transmission and my husband's been to busy at work to replace it, just not worth paying the extra $3.5k to have it fixed at a shop, the kids truck still runs great so there's no reason to replace it either. I go home to a house that was the cheapest POS in my neighborhood but we worked as a family to put in the time and sweat equity to remodel it from top to bottom over the past 10 or more years so it's now doubled in value (despite the housing crash - also taught our kids a bunch of stuff they'll need to know when they have their own homes,) and I chat with my youngest about school, while he texts with his buddies on his handed down four year old cellphone we'd gotten for his older brother because that was the best value at the time (we wouldn't even have replaced that 4yrs ago, but they changed to digital signal so we didn't have a choice,) and my husband gets home from the job he's been loyal to for years and he chats about how disappointed he was in himself for not finishing x in time to make the customer happy, or that he's taking a cut in hours because the recession really hit the business hard before he heads up to take a shower because he's covered in oil and dirt.

We don't panic about his pay cut though, because we've lived well within our means, our credit cards are only for emergencies, and if shit really hits the fan we can take some money from our investments that we faithfully put %0.5 of our income into every month, or our retirement we put 0.5% into, or the kids college fund(s) that we've put 1% into every month - even if we had things we wanted to buy, hell sometimes even when we had things we /needed/ to buy. And it's funny to me, because my husband only makes $25/h and we are not only fine, but we /have/ the "nice things" (home theater, four expensive computers, working phones, and we could have a pool if we wanted but Alaska so we have a hot tub, cabins, boats, snow machines, etc.) We've also already put three boys through college, and we have the money to put the fourth through in two years. In general we make like $30k a year and we're fine, we're happy, and really don't want for anything. So ya know, I look at the non-wealthy person and kind of roll my eyes at their complaints... It's a completely different mentality...

TLDR
my point is that America is not on a path that wealthy people agree with and as such we're not inclined to invest in that path. But go ahead and raise the tax to 90% on us an see how far you can stretch our "national pride." It won't matter to us, we simply move and rebuild; heck I was getting bored, a new house to fix up would keep me busy...