This is why we need to tax the wealthy

[BluesLegend]

If these mooching vulture losers confiscated every last dollar of the 'rich' money they would burn through it all inside 2-3 years and be right back where they are now.

 

[BluesLegend]

The losers are so much dead weight at this point not even all the rich people's wealth can carry them. I recommend they get off their fat lazy ass, work and pay their own damn bills.

 

[Oldestyle]

Billionaires Are Hoarding Trillions in Untaxed Wealth. They Want the Supreme Court to Keep It That Way

A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness found that America’s richest families accumulated $8.5 trillion in untaxed capital gains in 2022

www.yahoo.com

TRILLIONS in untaxed wealth. Good luck explaining this to republicans I guess. You have to explain the difference between the official tax rate and the EFFECTIVE tax rate of top earners.

Oh, Billy! You're such a silly! Here's a dose of reality for you. The ultra rich can put their money in lots of places. They aren't going to sit still and let you progressives come and take their capital. You continually TRY and they continually evade your attempts. They're ALWAYS one step ahead of you and always will be!

 

[Nuthin' Fancy]

Just like so many of you pathetic libturds, you conflate “scandals” with crime and corruption.

Youre a joke, Smokin’ dOPe.

WTF?

The presidency of Ronald Reagan was marked by numerous scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment or conviction of over 138 administration officials, the largest number for any president of the United States.

 

[ScorpioRising007]

Didn't somebody somewhere else try this?

Oh yeah, the USSR. How'd that Workers Paradise turn out?

fucking idiot

It's why you're dimocraps -- You never learn. Not ever.

We need to tax the living snot out of the rich.

A lot people go picking on the USSR but they have no clue about all the advantages the USSR had over the United States.

"The USSR has a multitude of achievements

USSR had a more nutritious diet than the US, according to the CIA. Calories consumed surpassed the US.

Ended famines.

Productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. It was illegal to hire others and accumulate personal wealth from their labor.

Had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century after Japan. The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.

Free Universal Health care, and most doctors per capita in the world. 42 doctors per 10k population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US.

Had near zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. The "continuous" part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.

USSR moved from 58.5-hour workweeks to 41.6 hour workweeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960 USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996.,

In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67.

All education, including university level, free.

99% literacy

Saved the world from Fascism, Taking on the majority of Nazi divisions, and killing 90% of Nazi soldiers. Bore the enormous cost of blood and pain in WW2 (25M dead), with the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare.. An estimated 70% of Soviet housing was destroyed by Nazi invasion. Nazis were in retreat after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, a full 2 years before the US landed troops in normandy.

Doubled life expectancy. Eliminated poverty.

Combatted (systemic) sex inequality.

Ended (systemic) Racial inequality.

Feudalism to space travel in 40 years. First satellite, rocket, space walk, woman, man, animal, space station, moon and mars probes.

Soviet power production per capita in 1990 was more than the EU, Great Britain, or China's in 2014.

Eliminated homelessness

And the list goes on and on

The fall of the USSR also led to the greatest drop in life expectancy ever, millions dead and millions more homeless, etc"

--source

 

[TruthNotBS]

Didn't somebody somewhere else try this?

Oh yeah, the USSR. How'd that Workers Paradise turn out?

fucking idiot

It's why you're dimocraps -- You never learn. Not ever.

The USSR got rid of all of its wealthy and capitalists, so you're barking up the wrong tree. Making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes doesn't equate to communism. Even if a country with a market capitalist economy legally prohibits anyone from having more than a billion dollars in assets and an anual net income of 12 million dollars, that wouldn't be communism or socialism either. If you can't live or aren't satisfied with a net income of a million dollars monthly, you should go see a psychiatrist.

 

[kyzr]

Add zero based budgeting. Make every department justify every dollar it needs. No more automatic increases.
Also, we need term limits. Nothing will happen without them.
Term limits and a balanced budget Amendment are the only things that will keep the US from financial ruin.

You don't put up numbers like I did in post #490.

I'm okay with zero based budgeting, but I'd also recommend another "Grace Commission" to study the government and see where significant cuts can be made.

 

[j-mac]

I got squat.

Didn’t pay your taxes eh?

 

[j-mac]

The USSR got rid of all of its wealthy and capitalists, so you're barking up the wrong tree. Making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes doesn't equate to communism. Even if a country with a market capitalist economy legally prohibits anyone from having more than a billion dollars in assets and an anual net income of 12 million dollars, that wouldn't be communism or socialism either. If you can't live or aren't satisfied with a net income of a million dollars monthly, you should go see a psychiatrist.

Just wondering, who made you the arbiter of what anyone can make?

 

[j-mac]

Obviously that isn't a high bar.

At least I don’t have to come in a message board and lie about my wealth…lol

pathetic…

 

[TruthNotBS]

We need to tax the living snot out of the rich.

A lot people go picking on the USSR but they have no clue about all the advantages the USSR had over the United States.

"The USSR has a multitude of achievements

USSR had a more nutritious diet than the US, according to the CIA. Calories consumed surpassed the US.

Ended famines.

Productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. It was illegal to hire others and accumulate personal wealth from their labor.

Had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century after Japan. The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.

Free Universal Health care, and most doctors per capita in the world. 42 doctors per 10k population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US.

Had near zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. The "continuous" part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.

USSR moved from 58.5-hour workweeks to 41.6 hour workweeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960 USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996.,

In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67.

All education, including university level, free.

99% literacy

Saved the world from Fascism, Taking on the majority of Nazi divisions, and killing 90% of Nazi soldiers. Bore the enormous cost of blood and pain in WW2 (25M dead), with the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare.. An estimated 70% of Soviet housing was destroyed by Nazi invasion. Nazis were in retreat after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, a full 2 years before the US landed troops in normandy.

Doubled life expectancy. Eliminated poverty.

Combatted (systemic) sex inequality.

Ended (systemic) Racial inequality.

Feudalism to space travel in 40 years. First satellite, rocket, space walk, woman, man, animal, space station, moon and mars probes.

Soviet power production per capita in 1990 was more than the EU, Great Britain, or China's in 2014.

Eliminated homelessness

And the list goes on and on

The fall of the USSR also led to the greatest drop in life expectancy ever, millions dead and millions more homeless, etc"

--source

These pro-capitalist zombie drones believe all of the Cold War propaganda that was fed them through the media and Hollywood. The USSR was the second-largest economy in the world. It was in a state of war since its birth in 1917. It was invaded by the United States, Britain, France, and 10 other countries immediately after WW1, in 1918. The socialist Red Army had to fight over a quarter million enemy combatants of the "White Army" (i.e. pro-capitalist/tsarist forces) and over 200K foreign invaders from 12 countries. By 1939, thanks to Stalin's five-year economic plans (a series of centrally planned development projects), Soviet Russia had become an industrial juggernaut, rivaling the United States. Its agriculture was more mechanized and modern than in the US and Western Europe.

The Soviets turned an under-industrialized, agrarian society with a 60% illiteracy rate into a nation that was literate, well-educated, and growing leaps and bounds economically, technologically, socially..etc. It was then invaded in 1941 by four million Nazi Germans, in Operation Barbarossa. Seven out of every ten Germans were fighting in Soviet Russia resulting in the death of approximately 28 million Soviets, of which 19 million were civilians. The Soviet Union won the war, but lost 14% of its population, with much of its national infrastructure destroyed. Soviet Russia was in ruins after WW2, unlike the US which lost 460 thousand of its citizens and came out of the war unscathed, thanks to being surrounded by two vast oceans (Atlantic & Pacific).

Despite the losses of the USSR in WW2, under Stalin's leadership and plenty of socialism, it became a nuclear superpower, in less than twelve years after the devastation of the Nazi invasion. They were launching satellites and cosmonauts into space, before the United States. Unlike Western Europe and Japan the USSR didn't have Uncle Sam's assistance ("The Marshal Plan"), after WW2, it had to pick itself up by its bootstraps and rebuild on its own.

A few years after the death of Stalin in the late 1950s, certain elements within the Soviet government, due to the Cold War, and ideological differences with Stalin's strict socialism, decided to placate and pander to Western powers, in an attempt to improve relations and maybe end the Cold War. They began to move towards reforming the Soviet political and economic system, making it more palatable to the United States and its allies. That's what eventually led to its demise in the early 1990s.

It took several decades for the anti-Stalin revisionists to have their way, and by the mid-1980s, they were able to fully apply "Perestroika" and "Glasnost" reforms, which led to massive shortages, breadlines, and the collapse of the Soviet economy. The US and Saudi Arabia also engineered a drop in oil prices, which hurt the USSR. The USSR essentially committed suicide, it dissolved itself. If the Soviets had remained Stalinists, they would by now be colonizing space and mining the asteroid belts. Soviet production would be fully automated and computerized, with artificial intelligence and every other technology available to make manufacturing as efficient as possible. The standard of living in Russia would be higher than in the US.

​

In the above "age-restricted video", we get a glimpse of life in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Imagine the USSR today with all of the technology we have available when it comes to the automation of production, intelligent robotics, artificial intelligence, powerful computers..etc. Soviet citizens would now in 2023 have a much higher standard of living than Russians have today under market capitalism. They would be extremely advanced.

​

What we see in Russia, except the younger generation highly influenced by Western media and values, is that most Russians who lived in the USSR, miss it. They know the situation today isn't necessarily better than how it was back then, even in the 1980s, at the height of "Perestroika" reforms, and all of the problems it created. These people miss the USSR. Americans have a completely skewed idea of Soviet Russia and its economic system, because the American wealthy elites did everything possible to demonize it in the eyes of their employees. The American working-class was fed a regular diet of anti-Soviet propaganda (i.e. bullshit). Most of what we heard about the USSR through our Western media and Hollywood, was an exaggeration, if not false.

 

[tyroneweaver]

Billionaires Are Hoarding Trillions in Untaxed Wealth. They Want the Supreme Court to Keep It That Way

A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness found that America’s richest families accumulated $8.5 trillion in untaxed capital gains in 2022

www.yahoo.com

TRILLIONS in untaxed wealth. Good luck explaining this to republicans I guess. You have to explain the difference between the official tax rate and the EFFECTIVE tax rate of top earners.

ya our goals should be to pay the same amount as your boy joe roomba biden

 

[TruthNotBS]

Just wondering, who made you the arbiter of what anyone can make?

Society determines that not me or you as individuals. If billionaires, the uber-rich, undermine our democracy, with their super PACs and armies of lobbyists and cronies in government, we can determine as a community, how much money (POWER) an individual person or family can amass and hoard. Many of these super-wealthy capitalists pay very little in taxes if anything. Capitalism's bottom line is private-profits, not the public good or what is best for the community or country. Capitalism's main purpose and drive, isn't always what is best for society, hence it must be properly regulated or the result is a right-wing, plutocratic nightmare, with gross inequality, high cost of living, no one has medical coverage, employees lack rights, and work under horrible conditions, for crap wages.

If your wages don't cover your rent, food, medical..etc, when you're earning $15 or even $25 hourly, you're living in a nation with a dysfunctional economy. The system is screwed up.

 

[Blues Man]

Society determines that not me or you as individuals. If billionaires, the uber-rich, undermine our democracy, with their super PACs and armies of lobbyists and cronies in government, we can determine as a community, how much money (POWER) an individual person or family can amass and hoard. Many of these super-wealthy capitalists pay very little in taxes if anything. Capitalism's bottom line is private-profits, not the public good or what is best for the community or country. Capitalism's main purpose and drive, isn't always what is best for society, hence it must be properly regulated or the result is a right-wing, plutocratic nightmare, with gross inequality, high cost of living, no one has medical coverage, employees lack rights, and work under horrible conditions, for crap wages.

If your wages don't cover your rent, food, medical..etc, when you're earning $15 or even $25 hourly, you're living in a nation with a dysfunctional economy. The system is screwed up.

No rich person ever decided what my income would be.

 

[TruthNotBS]

No rich person ever decided what my income would be.

Your rich employer determines what your wages are. You miss the point. Society has the right to regulate capitalism, impose taxes and determine how much power or money an individual can amass because too much power in the hands of one individual or family undermines democracy. If you want to live in a capitalist-run oligarchy and plutocracy, where vested interests determine government policy, rather than what is best for the American public (the country), don't properly regulate capitalism. You'll end up with an unsustainable economy and unstable society, on the brink of collapse. You'll have 1% of the population, owning 50%+ of the nation's wealth, and the working class will be consigned to living in deteriorating, horrible conditions.

 

[kaz]

The logic is no different than YOU having faith and dependency on the private market for a job. It’s a system that shapes how you vote. Quit pretending you’re above shit.

LOL, so your objection to slavery was you wanted to be a slave and weren't one! Those bastards! Thanks, MAGAt

 

[Blues Man]

Your rich employer determines what your wages are. You miss the point. Society has the right to regulate capitalism, impose taxes and determine how much power or money an individual can amass because too much power in the hands of one individual or family undermines democracy. If you want to live in a capitalist-run oligarchy and plutocracy, where vested interests determine government policy, rather than what is best for the American public (the country), don't properly regulate capitalism. You'll end up with an unsustainable economy and unstable society, on the brink of collapse. You'll have 1% of the population, owning 50%+ of the nation's wealth, and the working class will be consigned to living in deteriorating, horrible conditions.

I never had an employer in my adult life.

I decided what my income would be.

And it's not the amount of money a person has that is a threat to democracy or to be more accurate the republic, it's the corrupt politicians we vote for

 

[TruthNotBS]

I never had an employer in my adult life.

I decided what my income would be.

And it's not the amount of money a person has that is a threat to democracy or to be more accurate the republic, it's the corrupt politicians we vote for

So you're a capitalist, hence your antagonistic attitude towards society regulating capitalism and how much power an individual can amass. Politicians are forced to work within a corrupt system controlled by capitalists, who through their capital (i.e. money), purchase government policy. Those laws often undermine the public good and democracy. Society has every right to regulate capitalism including how much money an individual can amass. Money is created by the government and wealth is dependent upon society and the state's infrastructure and institutions, hence it has every right to determine how much wealth (POWER) an individual is permitted to have. Delude yourself into thinking otherwise if you wish.

 

[Blues Man]

So you're a capitalist, hence your antagonistic attitude towards society regulating capitalism and how much power an individual can amass. Politicians are forced to work within a corrupt system controlled by capitalists, who through their capital (i.e. money), purchase government policy. Those laws often undermine the public good and democracy. Society has every right to regulate capitalism including how much money an individual can amass. Money is created by the government and wealth is dependent upon society and the state's infrastructure and institutions, hence it has every right to determine how much wealth (POWER) an individual is permitted to have. Delude yourself into thinking otherwise if you wish.

We do regulate capitalism and we always have.

Taxing people who have not realized a profit has nothing to do with capitalism

 

[TruthNotBS]

We do regulate capitalism and we always have.

Taxing people who have not realized a profit has nothing to do with capitalism

Imposing taxes has everythging to do with running a country and society, controlling inflation, and maintaining the value of the dollar, which is crucial for capitalism's existence. Under our current fiat, sovereign currency no longer based upon the amount of gold reserves the nation has, the US federal budget is constrained by our nation's GDP or production capacity. So unlike under the gold standard our federal government doesn't rely on taxes to fund itself as it did before, although taxes still serve an important function, by taking money out of the economy, maintaining the value of the currency, and controlling inflation.

Taxes are integral to a modern, market capitalist economy, without them capitalism collapses. The wealthy must pay their fair share in taxes, just like working-class people pay their taxes as well. We all pay taxes.