The Question Conservatives Can't Answer

[Skull Pilot]

Hey Georgie boy

You still haven't answered my earlier question.

Do you truly believe a guy who makes 200K a year should have an additional 90K confiscated from him via taxes?

Sorry, Skull.
Cyberspace can be confusing.

I don't think someone earning $250,000 a year should be taxed at 90%.
I do believe someone earning $250,000,000 a year should be.

Robert Reich has proposed some additional tax brackets starting at $500,000 a year and progressing through $15,000,000 per.

"Under my proposal, incomes between $5 million and $15 million would be subjected to a 60 percent rate, and incomes between $500,000 and $5 million to a 50 percent rate."

Reich proposes to tax incomes of $15,000,000 per year or more at 70%.

Robert Reich (The Growing Desperation of the Don't-Raise-Taxes-on-the-Rich Crowd)

You believe in outright theft of another's property.

That's a great way for government to run.

 

[georgephillip]

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment

Since the top 1% of voters earn 20% of the income and pay 40% of the taxes and the top 5% pay 60% of the taxes, if this is true the rich aren't doing a very good job of it, are they?

But hey, who am I to stand in the way of a sweeping, baseless, inane accusation so carry on...

It's the Inequality, Stupid | Mother Jones

How rich are the superrich?

The top 0.01% of US earners now average $27 million per household.
The average income for the bottom of us? $31,244.

'Think the rich are overtaxed?

They paid 90% on every dollar over the first $100,000 half-a-century ago.
They pay 15% on every dollar today.

Maybe those rich parasites are doing better than you think?
Aren't they?

Or maybe you should stick to stupid.

 

[oreo]

"The following fact was sent to numerous conservative pundits, politicians, and profit-seekers:

"Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has TRIPLED its share of America's income over the past 30 years. Much of the gain came from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments.

"If their income had increased only at the pace of American productivity (80%), they would be taking about a TRILLION DOLLARS LESS out of our economy.

"And a question was posed:

"In what way do the richest 1% deserve these extraordinary gains?

"This question was not posed in sarcasm.

"A factual answer is genuinely sought.

"It seems unlikely that 1% of the population worked three times harder than the rest of us, or contributed three times as much to American productivity.

"Money earned from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments is not productive income."

Any takers, Cons?

The Question Conservatives Can't Answer | Common Dreams

The problem is 45% of the working American public pay no federal income tax what-so-ever and receive the same government benefits--off of other peoples backs. The top 10% in this country pay 70% of the entire tax base--and 45% of the public only pays 2.7%.

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance,and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."Winston Churchill

 

[SaneVoice]

Do you think the Works Progress Administration did anything "to help economic growth" during the Great Depression?

"Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years."

Actually, it is quite the opposite - programs such as the WPA caused the depression to be deeper and impact millions more than necessary. Take an unbiased view, and compare the "Great Depression of 1920" to the 1929 crash. Most people never heard of the depression of 1920 because the Administration didn't intervene with the heavy hand of government. Rather, they slashed federal spending - no kidding, there were cuts of 50% in a single year - and the market recovered just fine in under 18 months...in fact, this is why we call it the "booming 20s" today.

Compare that to FDR's intervention, which many economists blame for causing the depression to wage on for a decade and impact tens of millions who didn't need to be impacted. If you light the match, you can hardly be congratulated for putting the fire out once the building has been reduced to ashes, correct?

Why do you suppose the middle class in America was so much better off economically in the 1950s and 1960s when one in three US workers belonged to a union, corporations paid more federal income tax than US workers and the richest US workers paid 90% on all their individual income over $100,000?

Actually, that's a simple one: US workers were the most productive in the world, and technology had not yet made it possible to built the complex global supply chains we've become used to.

But of course the biggest reason was the less intrusive nature of the government. In 1900, for example, Government consumed 5% of GDP - today is is more than six times that large in relative terms.

 

[thereisnospoon]

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment

Since the top 1% of voters earn 20% of the income and pay 40% of the taxes and the top 5% pay 60% of the taxes, if this is true the rich aren't doing a very good job of it, are they?

But hey, who am I to stand in the way of a sweeping, baseless, inane accusation so carry on...

It's the Inequality, Stupid | Mother Jones

How rich are the superrich?

The top 0.01% of US earners now average $27 million per household.
The average income for the bottom of us? $31,244.

'Think the rich are overtaxed?

They paid 90% on every dollar over the first $100,000 half-a-century ago.
They pay 15% on every dollar today.

Maybe those rich parasites are doing better than you think?
Aren't they?

Or maybe you should stick to stupid.

Whatever. You have no proof of your numbers and percentages. 15% of 27 million is a lot of fucking money.
After the dust settles you message is still the same silly rhetoric. You hate the wealthy. You think they have stolen from you. Guess what?. Nobody cares what goes on in your little paranoid world.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

The questions conservatives don't like to answer are....

Why should the Forbes 400 pay taxes at a lower rate then the rest of us?

And the majority of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, and defense....

Which one of those would you cut?

Just remember folks whether or not the debt ceiling is raised there will still be 6 congressmen and senators total worth over 2 trillion dollars still on the tax payers payroll. The rest in congress follow close behind in worth. Whether the bills get paid they will still be on the tax payers payroll, with all that money.


Creating a new tax forcing the tax payers to give more of their hard earned money to them.

When are you people going to wake up

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfd​s/overview.php

 

[georgephillip]

Hey Georgie boy

You still haven't answered my earlier question.

Do you truly believe a guy who makes 200K a year should have an additional 90K confiscated from him via taxes?

Sorry, Skull.
Cyberspace can be confusing.

I don't think someone earning $250,000 a year should be taxed at 90%.
I do believe someone earning $250,000,000 a year should be.

Robert Reich has proposed some additional tax brackets starting at $500,000 a year and progressing through $15,000,000 per.

"Under my proposal, incomes between $5 million and $15 million would be subjected to a 60 percent rate, and incomes between $500,000 and $5 million to a 50 percent rate."

Reich proposes to tax incomes of $15,000,000 per year or more at 70%.

Robert Reich (The Growing Desperation of the Don't-Raise-Taxes-on-the-Rich Crowd)

Genius. Guess what happens then? People at those income levels will throttle back productivity, choose to not to work the entire year, refuse to expand their businesses, cash out of investments to limit income to levels just below the confiscatory levels.
At the end of the day this encourages a slow economy.
The result is lower revenue stream to government.
We know the reason behind confiscatory taxation. It is not to increase revenue. It is to punish.
You Georgie have a big problem with anyone who has more than you. You are a greedy person.

I have a problem with oligarchs.
And aristocrats which are generational oligarchs.

If people at high income levels throttle back on credit default swaps and high-speed investing where the underlying securities are held for fractions of a second, maybe this economy would begin to recover.

If you're really concerned with increasing revenue streams and accelerating this economy, you should ask why the US economy grew at 3.7 percent every year during almost three decades from 1951 to 1980 when the top tax rate varied between 70% and 90%, yet grew only 3 percent a year between '83 and 2007 when the top rate dropped to 35% to 39%.

Robert Reich:

"How to explain this? Easy.

"Since the early 1980s, a larger and larger share of total income has gone to the top (the richest 1 percent of Americans got 10 percent of total income in 1980, and get over 20 percent now).

"That’s left the vast middle class with insufficient purchasing power to boost the economy – without going deep into debt...

Robert Reich (The Growing Desperation of the Don't-Raise-Taxes-on-the-Rich Crowd)

 

[edthecynic]

Did the taxes on the rich fall while taxes on you increased? When did that happen?

Unearned income, is that a new "progressive" invention?

No, it is a well established CON$ervative concept!!!

August 7, 2007
CALLER: And, you know, and the way our tax system works, we have an overly complex system, which in and of itself is a problem, but the way our tax system works and the way the tax laws are written, it's based on a few kind of like hinge numbers like adjusted gross income and taxable income, and while the soak the rich -- or however you choose to describe it -- really doesn't come down that way. It really comes down to much lower income levels.

RUSH: It does, exactly, and here's the dirty little secret if you ever to pull it off. It's hard. This is why most people don't understand the tax-the-rich business. You've got to structure your life so you have no "earned" income. I'm out of time. I'll explain that. There's a category called earned income versus other kinds of income. Earned income is what the income tax rate is on. That's how "the rich" do it. They don't have "earned" income.
END TRANSCRIPT

Sorry, all my income is earned.
Whether it's salary or investment income.

I think a nice round 15% rate should be levied across the board.
Corporate, income and capital gains.

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

But as is typical of CON$, rather than admit that your claim that unearned income was a new progressive invention was full of shit, your own MessialRushie admits that the income of the truly rich is not earned income and that is how they avoid all tax increases on the "rich," you change the subject by going of on a tangent when no one was saying anything about whether YOUR income was earned or not.

The point is that the bulk of the taxes hit the wage earner and the truly wealthy do not work for wages. The truly wealthy amass wealth not wages. To make the tax system fair is to tax wealth the same as wages.

The Truth About Taxes
August 6, 2007
RUSH: I've told you before: the income tax is designed to keep people like his [Buffett's] secretary from becoming wealthy! There is no "wealth" tax. So this is a big misnomer. ...
But there's no tax on wealth. There is a tax on income, and the tax on income is designed to keep everybody who is not wealthy from getting there.

I'm talking about genuine wealth, not the way Democrats define "rich."

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

how much more do the rich have to make?
30% of total us income?
40%?

American workers were well off in the 50s because over a third of private sector workers were unionized while fewer than 7% are today. Sure the world was our oyster in the immediate aftermath of wwii; however, you can see the same basic bargain we had in the 50s on display in germany today.

Germany's growing much faster than the us with a ue level of 6.1%.

Instead of middle class wage stagnation over the last four decades, real hourly pay has risen almost 30% since 1985, and the country's been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

According to recent new york times article the top 1 percent of germans earn about 11 percent of all income, a percentage that hasn't changed in four decades. Compare that (if you care) to the us where the richest 1% earned 9% of total income in the late 70s to more than 20% today.

The difference between the two economies is primarily because german labor unions are still powerful enough to demand german workers get their fair share of their economic gains, and us unions are not.

how much more of us income does government have to take?
30% of total us income?
40%?

I wonder if german education concentrates more on reading, math and science and less on ethnic and gay studies?

15% of GDP...which is the lowest tax rate of all the industrialized nations except for Japan and Spain, who do not have a huge military like we do.

Tax Revenue as a Fraction of GDP | Department of Numbers

I hope you're not confusing tax rates with tax collections.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

No, it is a well established CON$ervative concept!!!

August 7, 2007
CALLER: And, you know, and the way our tax system works, we have an overly complex system, which in and of itself is a problem, but the way our tax system works and the way the tax laws are written, it's based on a few kind of like hinge numbers like adjusted gross income and taxable income, and while the soak the rich -- or however you choose to describe it -- really doesn't come down that way. It really comes down to much lower income levels.

RUSH: It does, exactly, and here's the dirty little secret if you ever to pull it off. It's hard. This is why most people don't understand the tax-the-rich business. You've got to structure your life so you have no "earned" income. I'm out of time. I'll explain that. There's a category called earned income versus other kinds of income. Earned income is what the income tax rate is on. That's how "the rich" do it. They don't have "earned" income.
END TRANSCRIPT

Sorry, all my income is earned.
Whether it's salary or investment income.

I think a nice round 15% rate should be levied across the board.
Corporate, income and capital gains.

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

But as is typical of CON$, rather than admit that your claim that unearned income was a new progressive invention was full of shit, your own MessialRushie admits that the income of the truly rich is not earned income and that is how they avoid all tax increases on the "rich," you change the subject by going of on a tangent when no one was saying anything about whether YOUR income was earned or not.

The point is that the bulk of the taxes hit the wage earner and the truly wealthy do not work for wages. The truly wealthy amass wealth not wages. To make the tax system fair is to tax wealth the same as wages.

The Truth About Taxes
August 6, 2007
RUSH: I've told you before: the income tax is designed to keep people like his [Buffett's] secretary from becoming wealthy! There is no "wealth" tax. So this is a big misnomer. ...
But there's no tax on wealth. There is a tax on income, and the tax on income is designed to keep everybody who is not wealthy from getting there.

I'm talking about genuine wealth, not the way Democrats define "rich."

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

Waah, savers and investors earn money when they invest!
Waaaaahhh. The government needs to punish them.

 

[edthecynic]

Sorry, all my income is earned.
Whether it's salary or investment income.

I think a nice round 15% rate should be levied across the board.
Corporate, income and capital gains.

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

But as is typical of CON$, rather than admit that your claim that unearned income was a new progressive invention was full of shit, your own MessialRushie admits that the income of the truly rich is not earned income and that is how they avoid all tax increases on the "rich," you change the subject by going of on a tangent when no one was saying anything about whether YOUR income was earned or not.

The point is that the bulk of the taxes hit the wage earner and the truly wealthy do not work for wages. The truly wealthy amass wealth not wages. To make the tax system fair is to tax wealth the same as wages.

The Truth About Taxes
August 6, 2007
RUSH: I've told you before: the income tax is designed to keep people like his [Buffett's] secretary from becoming wealthy! There is no "wealth" tax. So this is a big misnomer. ...
But there's no tax on wealth. There is a tax on income, and the tax on income is designed to keep everybody who is not wealthy from getting there.

I'm talking about genuine wealth, not the way Democrats define "rich."

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

Waah, savers and investors earn money when they invest!
Waaaaahhh. The government needs to punish them.

As a welfare queen investing nothing, you obviously don't know that investment income is not taxed as "earned income" like wages are. They are taxed as "capital gains" which means they are not taxed as they grow year after year. Cap gains are like an unlimited IRA for the wealthy, with NO penalty for early withdrawal. When the increase in value is finally taken after it has grown tax free, it is then taxed at a lower rate than wages. But this special treatment is not good enough for the greedy tycoons, these elitists believe they are just too good for any taxes and want cap gains taxes reduced to $0.00. Taxes are only good for the common wage earner, investors are too special for taxes.

 

[georgephillip]

What progressives like you can't seem to understand is that taking capital out of the hands of private investors and giving it to the government does nothing to help economic growth. For some unknown reason you all have this unwavering belief that taking money away from the wealthy will somehow improve the lot of the middle class and quite frankly, it never has.

Here's a radical concept! Instead of trying to bring the wealthiest Americans "down" how about we stop choking our economy off with regulations that do little to solve the problems they were designed to address but have caused jobs to be taken over seas by the hundreds of thousands? You want to explore why the rich in America are now making more than the rest of us? Did it ever occur to you that's easily explainable by the fact that we've lost jobs overseas because union greed and government intervention have made the US a less desirable place to run a business? Why would any rational business person open a factory here...when the business would be instantly hamstrung by out of control labor costs and penal government regulations?

We used to make things in America. We don't anymore. It isn't that the rich make more...it's that our industrial base that used to support the middle class with high paying jobs doesn't exist anymore. If you REALLY want to solve the problem, it doesn't lie in taxing the wealthy...it lies in creating a business climate that encourages job creation for blue collar workers.

Do you think the Works Progress Administration did anything "to help economic growth" during the Great Depression?

"Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years."

Works Progress Administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment. Has it occurred to you the rich in this country are shipping US jobs overseas because of the slave wages paid in China?

Why do you suppose the middle class in America was so much better off economically in the 1950s and 1960s when one in three US workers belonged to a union, corporations paid more federal income tax than US workers and the richest US workers paid 90% on all their individual income over $100,000?

That's false. The middle class is at it's best place now. Just because there are fewer factory jobs and less unionism, does not translate to a poorer middle class.
If anything lets compare the middle class of the 50's and 60's to now.
We lived in cities and close suburbs. We lived small homes averaging 1200 to 1500 square feet. Most households had one car( if any) one television. Air conditioning was a luxury. Households had far more second hand merchandise. Children did not get new clothing. They got hand me downs. Few of us had clothes dryers. Most people had little in the way of savings. And only the wealthy could afford a 4 year college education for their kids. In fact a much lower percentage of high school graduates went to college.
The few things I miss about my early childhood was that we were a more peaceful nation. People had respect for their neighbors. Family was the most important part of a community. When I was in school, I knew very few kids that did not live with both parents.
The middle class is quite large and for the most part successful.
The perception of middle class depends on which ideology is talking.
Those on the Left exclude non blue collar workers and non government white collar workers from middle class. To them, white collar workers represent wealth and non union work. That angers them.
THose on the political right see middle class as those who can afford to send their kids to college, can live in a nice neighborhood whether that is urban suburban or rural, have a few luxuries, be able to put away savings for retirement and a rainy day. This is without consideration to the type of work people perform to make a living.

Some of this rings true to me since I lived in a blue-collar home similar to those you remember; I think you're gazing back at those years through rose-colored glasses, however.

"...Charles Hugh Smith laid out a fairly clear argument for the disappearance of the middle class, at least in terms of wealth.

"As Smith notes, the top 20% of the American populace holds roughly 93% of the country's financial wealth, and the top 1% of the country holds approximately 43% of the money in the U.S.

"Meanwhile, the middle 20% of the population -- what would, officially, be called the middle class -- holds only 6% of the country's total assets.

"While disturbing, even this minuscule share of the wealth pie dwarfs the bottom 40% of the country, who control less than 1%.

Disturbing Statistics on the Decline of America's Middle Class - DailyFinance

Since most of the very rich live in gated bubbles they have little reason to care about the effects of such concentrated wealth on those in the middle and lower class today. As long as the rest of us continue "choosing" between Democrat OR Republican in the voting booth, the rich will continue to prosper at our expense.

Until they don't.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

But as is typical of CON$, rather than admit that your claim that unearned income was a new progressive invention was full of shit, your own MessialRushie admits that the income of the truly rich is not earned income and that is how they avoid all tax increases on the "rich," you change the subject by going of on a tangent when no one was saying anything about whether YOUR income was earned or not.

The point is that the bulk of the taxes hit the wage earner and the truly wealthy do not work for wages. The truly wealthy amass wealth not wages. To make the tax system fair is to tax wealth the same as wages.

The Truth About Taxes
August 6, 2007
RUSH: I've told you before: the income tax is designed to keep people like his [Buffett's] secretary from becoming wealthy! There is no "wealth" tax. So this is a big misnomer. ...
But there's no tax on wealth. There is a tax on income, and the tax on income is designed to keep everybody who is not wealthy from getting there.

I'm talking about genuine wealth, not the way Democrats define "rich."

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

Waah, savers and investors earn money when they invest!
Waaaaahhh. The government needs to punish them.

As a welfare queen investing nothing, you obviously don't know that investment income is not taxed as "earned income" like wages are. They are taxed as "capital gains" which means they are not taxed as they grow year after year. Cap gains are like an unlimited IRA for the wealthy, with NO penalty for early withdrawal. When the increase in value is finally taken after it has grown tax free, it is then taxed at a lower rate than wages. But this special treatment is not good enough for the greedy tycoons, these elitists believe they are just too good for any taxes and want cap gains taxes reduced to $0.00. Taxes are only good for the common wage earner, investors are too special for taxes.

It's true that capital gains are taxed at a different rate than wages.

It's also true that unrealized gains are not taxed.

So what?

 

[Qball]

"The following fact was sent to numerous conservative pundits, politicians, and profit-seekers:

"Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has TRIPLED its share of America's income over the past 30 years. Much of the gain came from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments.

"If their income had increased only at the pace of American productivity (80%), they would be taking about a TRILLION DOLLARS LESS out of our economy.

"And a question was posed:

"In what way do the richest 1% deserve these extraordinary gains?

"This question was not posed in sarcasm.

"A factual answer is genuinely sought.

"It seems unlikely that 1% of the population worked three times harder than the rest of us, or contributed three times as much to American productivity.

"Money earned from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments is not productive income."

Any takers, Cons?

The Question Conservatives Can't Answer | Common Dreams

I fail to understand how the question is even relevant. I don't see how it's anybody's business how much somebody else makes, provided they made it legally.

 

[edthecynic]

Except your welfare income was "earned" by others, not by you!

Waah, savers and investors earn money when they invest!
Waaaaahhh. The government needs to punish them.

As a welfare queen investing nothing, you obviously don't know that investment income is not taxed as "earned income" like wages are. They are taxed as "capital gains" which means they are not taxed as they grow year after year. Cap gains are like an unlimited IRA for the wealthy, with NO penalty for early withdrawal. When the increase in value is finally taken after it has grown tax free, it is then taxed at a lower rate than wages. But this special treatment is not good enough for the greedy tycoons, these elitists believe they are just too good for any taxes and want cap gains taxes reduced to $0.00. Taxes are only good for the common wage earner, investors are too special for taxes.

It's true that capital gains are taxed at a different rate than wages.

It's also true that unrealized gains are not taxed.

So what?

Back to the patented CON$ervative dumb act.

Income is income, and to give special treatment to the main income of one class over another is "class warfare."
Get it????

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

As a welfare queen investing nothing, you obviously don't know that investment income is not taxed as "earned income" like wages are. They are taxed as "capital gains" which means they are not taxed as they grow year after year. Cap gains are like an unlimited IRA for the wealthy, with NO penalty for early withdrawal. When the increase in value is finally taken after it has grown tax free, it is then taxed at a lower rate than wages. But this special treatment is not good enough for the greedy tycoons, these elitists believe they are just too good for any taxes and want cap gains taxes reduced to $0.00. Taxes are only good for the common wage earner, investors are too special for taxes.

It's true that capital gains are taxed at a different rate than wages.

It's also true that unrealized gains are not taxed.

So what?

Back to the patented CON$ervative dumb act.

Income is income, and to give special treatment to the main income of one class over another is "class warfare."
Get it????

I already said I want income, capital gains and corporate taxes to all be 15%.
No more special treatment.

 

[georgephillip]

The rich have to make more first, before they can benefit from lowered taxes.

American workers were well off in the 50s because Eurpoe and Asia were recovering from the nearly complete destruction of their infrastructure and manufacturing base.

We'd have done even better if the government weren't stifling productivity with a 90% tax rate.

How much more do the rich have to make?
30% of total US income?
40%?

American workers were well off in the 50s because over a third of private sector workers were unionized while fewer than 7% are today. Sure the world was our oyster in the immediate aftermath of WWII; however, you can see the same basic bargain we had in the 50s on display in Germany today.

Germany's growing much faster than the US with a UE level of 6.1%.

Instead of middle class wage stagnation over the last four decades, real hourly pay has risen almost 30% since 1985, and the country's been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

According to recent New York Times article the top 1 percent of Germans earn about 11 percent of all income, a percentage that hasn't changed in four decades. Compare that (if you care) to the US where the richest 1% earned 9% of total income in the late 70s to more than 20% today.

The difference between the two economies is primarily because German labor unions are still powerful enough to demand German workers get their fair share of their economic gains, and US unions are not.

How much more of US income does government have to take?
30% of total US income?
40%?

I wonder if German education concentrates more on reading, math and science and less on ethnic and gay studies?

I wonder how many factories Germany lost between 2001 and 2009?

"When looking at the declining American middle class, a good number to start with is 42,400. That's the total number of factories that the U.S. lost between 2001 and the end of 2009.

"Put another way, this translates into the outsourcing of 32% of all manufacturing jobs in America."

Who got rich from that?
Gays or ethnics?

Disturbing Statistics on the Decline of America's Middle Class - DailyFinance

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

How much more do the rich have to make?
30% of total US income?
40%?

American workers were well off in the 50s because over a third of private sector workers were unionized while fewer than 7% are today. Sure the world was our oyster in the immediate aftermath of WWII; however, you can see the same basic bargain we had in the 50s on display in Germany today.

Germany's growing much faster than the US with a UE level of 6.1%.

Instead of middle class wage stagnation over the last four decades, real hourly pay has risen almost 30% since 1985, and the country's been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

According to recent New York Times article the top 1 percent of Germans earn about 11 percent of all income, a percentage that hasn't changed in four decades. Compare that (if you care) to the US where the richest 1% earned 9% of total income in the late 70s to more than 20% today.

The difference between the two economies is primarily because German labor unions are still powerful enough to demand German workers get their fair share of their economic gains, and US unions are not.

How much more of US income does government have to take?
30% of total US income?
40%?

I wonder if German education concentrates more on reading, math and science and less on ethnic and gay studies?

I wonder how many factories Germany lost between 2001 and 2009?

"When looking at the declining American middle class, a good number to start with is 42,400. That's the total number of factories that the U.S. lost between 2001 and the end of 2009.

"Put another way, this translates into the outsourcing of 32% of all manufacturing jobs in America."

Who got rich from that?
Gays or ethnics?

Disturbing Statistics on the Decline of America's Middle Class - DailyFinance

If our public education system wasn't so screwed, our graduates wouldn't have to work in factories.
How many manufacturing jobs has China lost since 2001?

 

[edthecynic]

It's true that capital gains are taxed at a different rate than wages.

It's also true that unrealized gains are not taxed.

So what?

Back to the patented CON$ervative dumb act.

Income is income, and to give special treatment to the main income of one class over another is "class warfare."
Get it????

I already said I want income, capital gains and corporate taxes to all be 15%.
No more special treatment.

But you obviously didn't mean it or you wouldn't have asked "So what?"

 

[georgephillip]

The questions conservatives don't like to answer are....

Why should the Forbes 400 pay taxes at a lower rate then the rest of us?

And the majority of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, and defense....

Which one of those would you cut?

My first choice would be the one with cost-plus contracts.

A WPA-II program would be administered like the original with the military assuming operational command. Do you think it's possible over the next generation (at least) to put military and civilians to work rebuilding US infrastructure instead of bombing infrastructure on the opposite side of the planet?

State banks like the one in North Dakota could provide some of the financing without any help from Wall Street.