[Ludi]

I see, you are not poor.

an you despise us too....

It makes sense that the wealthy class would support becoming even wealthier! Except Warren Buffett, of course, who seems to have a conscience.

[Ludi]

And I guess that's your point, right? Having money and getting a break is morally superior to being hard up and getting one?

Some folks in our society seem to equate having wealth with having virtue, and not having wealth with not having virtue. Either some form of Calvinism or maybe Ayn Randism.

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue." - Ayn Rand

[KingM]

There is always a parasitic class. There is a big number on the bottom that suck as much as they can out of the system and lack either the ability or the desire to produce enough on their own to keep from starving. Then there is a parasitic group on top that sucks up the productive wealth by extracting rents and other value transference from the people actually producing. They are far smaller in number, but far more efficient.

The difference between the two groups, apart from size and efficiency, is that you can get rid of the bottom group when times are tough. You can't get rid of the top group, no matter what. There will always be warlords, a priestly class, pharaohs, shoguns, a politburo, investment bankers, or whatever they call themselves in a given era. When times get tough, they don't suffer, they make others suffer. First, the vast parasitic underclass starves or is enslaved, and then they tighten the screws on the productive classes.

[Lore]

What mechanism do the TeaParty have in mind to redistribute wealth downward?

If you're poor you don't pay taxes, you get tons of benefits, and are allowed to use the infrastructure (school, police, roads, army, etc.). Looks to me there's plenty of 'downward' redistribution going on already. What is it again? The top 5% carry 50% of the tax burden?

The top percentile pays more taxes because they are richer then they've ever been, not because their tax rate is that much higher then it should be. The disparity is not between the rich and the poor, that has always been a wide gap, but between the wealthy and the middle class.

[vision-master]

I say the rulers/ wealthy are going to fail.

[Ludi]

Then there is a parasitic group on top that sucks up the productive wealth by extracting rents and other value transference from the people actually producing. They are far smaller in number, but far more efficient.

The TeaParty seem intent on protecting that top group, in spite of the fact that they don't need protecting, they will do just fine.

It's this protection of the top parasites that I don't understand. The bottom parasites are mostly a myth promoted by insecure working people in service to the top parasites.

[Ludi]

The disparity is not between the rich and the poor, that has always been a wide gap, but between the wealthy and the middle class.

It's important to the wealthy that people remain confused about this. If the middle class can keep its hate on for the poor, the wealthy can take more and more wealth and power, with the middle class protecting and supporting them.

http://www.lcurve.org/LCurveVideo.htm

[dsula]

I see, you are not poor.

an you despise us too....

It makes sense that the wealthy class would support becoming even wealthier! Except Warren Buffett, of course, who seems to have a conscience.

I'm not poor, but I'm also far away from wealthy. I'm in the middle of middle class. BUT I have a sense of fairness and understanding. And I understand that there are high earners out there that deserve it. Because they are innovative, create business, create jobs for others. As opposed to the rest of the board here, who believe everybody making a dollar more than themselves are ueberweahlty and must be taxed to death.

How is it again Ludi & 6-string & CO? 0% tax for me, 90% for everybody making more than I.

[vision-master]

an the weathly has convinced you it's bc of all those poor losers who don't pay taxes.

[Pops]

And I understand that there are high earners out there that deserve it.

See I think this is where you are mistaken, I don't think people are out to get "high earners".

I mean I don't have anything against an orthopedist making $250k or a plumber either for that matter.

What makes people upset is stuff like this:

A chief executive officer of a Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 index company was paid, on average, $9.25 million in total compensation in 2009.

Link

Of course that's at the same time of big layoffs in those same companies. Here is time mag:

During the postwar boom, pay for U.S. CEOs remained fairly steady in real dollars until the 1970s. But under new tax policies, the 1980s saw the rise of stock options. Intended to tie executive pay to performance, they offered the potential for huge riches with little downside, encouraging risk-taking. In 1991, CEOs earned 140 times the average worker's pay. A 1993 attempt to cap compensation merely shifted more pay into options. By 2007 the median S&P 500 CEO earned in three hours what a minimum-wage worker pulled down in a year. And Great Recession or no, 2009 looks like more of the same.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z16Dgj8jdz

[dsula]

an the weathly has convinced you it's bc of all those poor losers who don't pay taxes.

Yeah, some guy in africa, making $10/day is wondering why those super rich people in the US, you know, everybodey making more than $10/day, are not taxed at 90%, and the money sent to africa to their benefits.
Wealthy is relative. Not surprisingly, wealthy for the lefties is always anybody making or having more than themselfes. Jealousy is not good for your health. It eats you up.

[vision-master]

You could be next?

We all are living in a bubble.

The bubble pops, then what?

many ppl have gone from hard working middle class to the bottom.

It happened to my brother a couple years ago.

Who's going to HELP you if it all unravels.

[dsula]

What makes people upset is stuff like this:

A chief executive officer of a Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 index company was paid, on average, $9.25 million in total compensation in 2009.

Link

I agree, but that's the exception. Small and medium size companies are the norm, maybe even owner operated. They deserve what the earn. Even if it's millions.

To solve your big company problem you don't have to tax at an insane level. Much better is to break up companies. Limit the size to a few 1000 employees, or limit their value. That's what solves the problem much better than high taxes.

[KingM]

It's important to understand the orders of magnitude in wealth between the poorest and the richest. I would say someone in the U.S. trying to support a family who is making $25,000 a year is poor, wouldn't you agree? This year, due to a variety of circumstances not likely to be duplicated, my wife and I made roughly $250,000 before taxes. I feel pretty flush. We took a trip to France with the whole family, saved a good chunk of money, etc.

I have a friend who is a NY Times Bestselling author. I don't know how much she made last year, but I know a couple of years ago when she had a successful book and one of her other books was turned into a made-for-tv movie, she made well over $2,000,000. This is the same difference in income from mine as I am from the poor working class guy who tries to support his family on $25,000.

There are people out there like athletes and celebrities, who make ten times more than she does. To them, she's the poor guy making 25K. And what's even more crazy, is there are hedge fund managers and the like who make ten times more than they do. The difference in wealth between them and my rich author friend is the same as between the woman making $2,000,000 a year and the guy hanging drywall for 10 bucks an hour.

And you know what? There were several hedge fund managers who made 10 times more than that!

Think of it this way. One hundred thousand Mexican laborers working forty hours a week hanging drywall worked two hundred million man hours at ten bucks an hour and made less in 2009 than James Simmons, head of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, who received 2.5 billion (2,500,000,000.00) in compensation last year.

What did he do? He extracted money in small percentages from lots of other people so they could invest their savings. For that, he was paid more than 100,000,000 laborers.

[Ludi]

I mean I don't have anything against an orthopedist making $250k or a plumber either for that matter.

Me either. A person earning that much isn't going to be in the top income tax bracket. They won't be paying income tax on $250,000. That income is in the upper middle class (aka professional class), not the true wealthy class. As you point out, the wealthy class make insane amounts of money and because a great deal of it is investment income, they pay a lower tax rate on their income than the orthopedist or plumber pays on theirs. But some people seem to think this is fair and should be defended. It makes no sense to me.

[Lore]

I agree, but that's the exception. Small and medium size companies are the norm, maybe even owner operated. They deserve what the earn. Even if it's millions.

To solve your big company problem you don't have to tax at an insane level. Much better is to break up companies. Limit the size to a few 1000 employees, or limit their value. That's what solves the problem much better than high taxes.

If an individual is earning millions, they are no longer in the bottom 98 percentile. No one is denying them their millions that they earn. Only the disproportionate rate at which the income is being taxed and how this wealth is then being distributed.

For example, if the former President and Chairman of Bank of America, Ken Lewis, upon his severance was only given 25 million instead of the 100 million that he reportedly received, and the rest of the 75 million was given in $50,000 awards to 1,500 middle class workers. The return to the economy would have been an order of magnitude greater and Ken Lewis would still be the wealthier for it.

Limiting companies to a 1,000 or fewer employees would be neither productive or practical on a planet with this many consumers. The net effect would be higher prices defeating the very purpose of the exercise. Although, part of the problem now is that we have the ability to produce more than we can afford to consume.

[Cog]

As usual no body would answer the question. Especially Ludi. Just saying.

Ludi, like most "Lets tax the rich and give to the poor" folks don't like to consider what happens when you actually enact policies that do that. Ludi is a slippery gal and you have to get up early in the morning to actually trap her into admitting anything.

[vision-master]

Tell us what happens?

[Livewire713]

Tell us what happens?

Yes Cog...tell us what happens! Im all ears! Maybe deMolay will answer if you can't.

[Cog]

Tell us what happens?

Is your name Ludi? I'll let you know if I want to rattle your particular chain.