[Poll] Wealth Re-distribution?

I don't mind taking from the oil companies and handing it out to 95% of Americans. they'll get it back anyway
 
Not through government taxes. But I am all for workers unionizing and extorting as much as they can out of greedy companies. Seriously, if many of these companies can pay millions of dollars to CEOs they can afford to pay their other employees better too. There's often a huge disparity between upper management and actual productive members of the company, and I'm all for those members using labour unions to equalize things a little more.
 
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SaintDude said:
I think that if I do well for myself and want to leave tons of cash to my kids then the government should keep their damn hands out of it. The money was already taxed when I made it. Taxed again on any capital gains. Why exactly do you think the government should take someones assets like that? That's flat out socialism right there and it stinks.
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I'm of the mind set that all that kid did to earn the money was be fortunate enough to be sprung from the loins of wealthy parents. I certainly don't think that all of it should be taken, not at all. And I'd say up to a certain amount, nearly all of it should be available to the children. I certainly would want my children to not have to struggle to get anywhere in life, and never have to chose between bills and food. But then again, I don't think a free ride is in order either.

Essentially, I think at most they should have enough to get by for a decade, maybe two, living at the level of average middle class families, any less, they keep it all. Far from socialist. There's fucking opportunity written all over having the wealth of a family's income over many years at your disposal. If they can't take advantage of it, then they certainly don't deserve more. If they can, they will have more.
 
Stilgar said:
Trouble is, there must be a minimum floor.
The guy making $5 shouldn't pay tax to begin with.

And now I have opend the door to exemptions & deductions ...the same system we use today.
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Who says he shouldn't be taxed? Make it a flat tax and everyone, including the dude flipping burgers in the middle of Kansas, pays their "fair share". Don't like your job and you're not making enough? Then get off your ass and do something about it. You're not entitled to anything in this world except of what you make of yourself in the first place. If you're lazy and can't be bothered or motivated to make more than $5 an hour then don't come crying for handouts.
 
With regard to the Laffer curve. Yes its a very simple idea that is trivially true in a sense. There are two minima at 0 and 100 therefore there is a global maximum somewhere (high school calculus) and its the job of policy makers to find it, if maximizing gov revenues is what you want. 100% taxation is probably not zero, but then it will be very close.

Further you can assume a certain amount of smoothness close to the end points, which means you probably cant tax people at 95% or 5% and expect to hit the global max. After that point, well, its anyones guess.

You have to quantify in a sense whats the stronger mover. The motivation to work versus the amount of money you make. If you are already rich, already the motivation to make additional funds is scaled down, so consequently that might tend to push the global maximum closer to the left.

A good way in principle of tracking that number is which direction the quintiles flow. If a majority of of rich people are changing brackets into the lower tiers, that probably means the tax rate is too high, otoh its not that simple either as the savings rate are grossly disproportionate (which pushes it to the right).

But in a sense, all this is besides the point. We don't necessarily want an uber wealthy government for a myriad of other economic reasons. It crowds out domestic spending, is a net loss in efficiency levels. Central planning in many ways is an idea of the past, and one that not many economists take that seriously anymore.
 
Dark Volcanic said:
I'm of the mind set that all that kid did to earn the money was be fortunate enough to be sprung from the loins of wealthy parents. I certainly don't think that all of it should be taken, not at all. And I'd say up to a certain amount, nearly all of it should be available to the children. I certainly would want my children to not have to struggle to get anywhere in life, and never have to chose between bills and food. But then again, I don't think a free ride is in order either.
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Again, who are you to say what happens with what I make? Any of it. If I'm in a position to make my kids stupidly wealthy and retarded then it's my call, not yours, nor the governments. You don't think a free ride is in order? I agree, the government shouldn't get more free money than what the current tax laws provide. It works both ways.

Essentially, I think at most they should have enough to get by for a decade, maybe two, living at the level of average middle class families, any less, they keep it all. Far from socialist. There's fucking opportunity written all over having the wealth of a family's income over many years at your disposal. If they can't take advantage of it, then they certainly don't deserve more. If they can, they will have more.
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No, that is fucking socialist. You're taking money away from someone else and giving it to the government. Call it taxes, call it whatever might make you feel better but you're basically stealing from someone who has wealth and giving it to X ... X being the government, people, charity, whatever. It doesn't matter who it goes to. It only matters who's losing it and in this case it's the surviving members of my family. Period. Trying to sugar coat it by saying its only some of the money is like me stealing from a bank and only clearing out the tellers but not the vault.

I honestly feel like I'm getting trolled here. I honestly cannot believe you're sitting there with that horse shit coming out of your mouth.
 
[X] for.

Our primary means of minimally taxed income (capital gains) is more effective for the already rich; case in point the Visa IPO. Basically, if we don't have a uniformly progressive tax system, the rich are gonna keep getting richer - by leaps and bounds.

I see a problem with that. I don't have a problem with rich people, I have a problem with the momentum of wealth.
 
SaintDude said:
Again, who are you to say what happens with what I make? Any of it. If I'm in a position to make my kids stupidly wealthy and retarded then it's my call, not yours, nor the governments. You don't think a free ride is in order? I agree, the government shouldn't get more free money than what the current tax laws provide. It works both ways.



No, that is fucking socialist. You're taking money away from someone else and giving it to the government. Call it taxes, call it whatever might make you feel better but you're basically stealing from someone who has wealth and giving it to X ... X being the government, people, charity, whatever. It doesn't matter who it goes to. It only matters who's losing it and in this case it's the surviving members of my family. Period. Trying to sugar coat it by saying its only some of the money is like me stealing from a bank and only clearing out the tellers but not the vault.

I honestly feel like I'm getting trolled here. I honestly cannot believe you're sitting there with that horse shit coming out of your mouth.
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Taxes are socialist. I see where you are coming from.

Try throwing some more ridiculous inflammatory insults my way.

I strongly believe you need to earn what you have. If you are given the opportunity that most people never have, and squander it, then fuck you, get the fuck off the top of the system, you don't belong there. Let somebody who can get there through their own will and wit take your place, because you can't fucking cut it.

Take the money and put it into public uses like education and roads, national mass transit, things that everybody can use. Fuck welfare, fuck affirmative action, fuck social programs, make the restrictions even tighter. Half the people on them are layabouts who don't deserve that money either; the other half are struggling through some means or another, and actually need the help. Put it to real use where everybody can benefit.
 
I like the Green/Libertarian idea of a national sales tax and getting rid of the IRS and income tax. Seems like it would work in our "fear and consume" economy.
 
generally speaking, there is a diminishing marginal utility of income

What this means is rather vague as individuals have different theoretical utility functions but if you made the same offer to the same individual at two different incomes the individual would have a higher response rate at lower income levels.

Essentially if you offered someone $3,000 to do something in addition to his existing job where he's earning either $25,000 or $250,000, he is more likely to accept the offer and do the work at $25,000 because the marginal utility gain represented by the income increase is higher at a lower income.

This matters if your goal is utility maximization across the entire economy but not if that is not your goal.
 
Middle class Americans have spent so much time pretending to be wealthy that they've become bitter and jaded towards the actual wealthy and therefore want to steal money from them in order to continue pretending they deserve it.
 
Either work to end the class divide now or get ready for a revolution in the future.

We saw how ignoring a problem worked with the economy...
 
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