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"What Do You Want For Free?"
Via Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics,
Why shouldn’t the rich pay more taxes?
There are not enough billionaires to pay the bill for everyone else. Job growth since 1948 in government reached 310% in 2009 compared to 170% in non-farm private jobs. Male job growth has increased only 65% since 1948 on par with population growth while female job growth has increased about 135%. Women won the right to work, but lost the right to stay home.
The problem is NOT that the rich do not pay enough, it is that government takes too much from the economy as a whole. You can listen to the propaganda all you want and believe they will only target the rich. But they ALWAYS go after everyone. There are videos of IRS agents dragging pregnant women out of their cars leaving them on the streets and confiscating the cars. The latest is taking your money claiming some family member owed them money.
My point is not to protect the billionaires – it is to protect society from those that plunder everything we have. The only viable solution is to restrict the size of government. I disagree with the social state for it would be cheaper for just about everything to be private and far less corruption. They started the income tax swearing they were only targeting the rich – lie. Then they started the payroll tax so they could give you social security – now people pay more in SS than taxes and they keep raising the age and reducing the payouts.
If you want to believe these people are honest and care about you, great. Have a nice dream.
When it comes time to collect – well you will discover your entire life trusting them was wrong. Then what? You die in some ditch dead broke and nothing to support you when you can no longer work? Believe what you want. The Jews were offered free showers. What do you want for free?
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Humans are the only living thing that pays to live on the earth. And we think we are the most intelligent.
Incorrect. All living things pay a cost in energy & complexity to live on Earth.
Those living things which fail to pay fail to keep living.
Reproduction is part of that complexity.
Metabolism is part of that payment system.
Mobility is part of that payment system. Even bacteria, plankton, algae, fungus & seeds are mobile. Seeds which have evolved to be eaten by birds & shat out somewhere, seeds which have evolved to have furry appendages to be carried in the wind are MOBILE and that is WORK. It cost ENERGY & molecules to do that.
Not one living thing on Earth has ever failed to make the payment, or it has been wiped out sometimes in just milliseconds. Everything has a cost.
You know what a flagella is? It's like a tiny bacterial motor. It has an energy cost. Without it the bacteria is immobile, failed to pay the cost to live and will be eradicated as a penalty. It cost molecules to construct (grow), costs molecules (carrying electrons) to make it move.
You are wilfully blind. Open your damn eyes. You are 100% blue-pill on this. No red pills in sight.
The Rich (big R) are essentially the winners in a zero-sum-game. They've vacuumed up all the spending that the Fed Gov injects into the economy. There's only two ways to shake it out of them: taxes or bonds.
And the only reason to shake it out of them is to reduce inflation, the byproduct of the Government injecting money into the economy. And unlike the Fed Reserve, the Fed Gov operates on a sterilized basis in its open market operations.
Non-sense. You can keep believing that this is a zero sum game or you can create your own value. Granted that we approach something more akin to a zero sum game the more the fedgov meddles.
There's only two sources of increasing float in US currency: new debt or unsterililzed spending by the Fed Reserve. When the liquidity pump of new debt starts going in reverse, the Fed Reserve steps in with unsterilized spending. That's a zero sum game.
When the money spent by the Fed Gov is quickly spent by recipients at Walmart, that's a zero sum game.
Correct, a zero sum game that you play in peripherally at best. Recommend playing the non-zero sum game that you have some control over!
Absurd.
Those who got it by stealing can lose it by stealing in big, huge chunks. Charge & convict for crimes of fraud & embezzlement, take THE ENTIRE THING. ALL ASSETS. Tax? Pashawww says I.
Empty their assets & return what's stolen to where it came from.
double posted - deleted.
69% of the federal government's "business" is wealth redistribution. Once you add up welfare payments and FEDGOV pensions, benefits, and salaries, you have accounted for 69% of the annual federal budget. Millions of boomers are starting to retire...get ready for it!
That would explain why the 0.1% are getting a bigger and bigger slice of the pie...
Maybe...but so what if they are? That affects you not one iota, even though you might think that it does. Want to become a millionaire? Come up with a good concept and get these 0.1%ers to invest in it. You will suddenly change your thinking.
That argument always bothers me, this notion that what one takes doesn't affect what's left for everyone else, because there's always more pie. It only serves to excuse today's 'grab' by telling everyone else that their share will soon arrive.
Instead of pie, I prefer the All-You-Can-Eat buffet. Everyone pays their entry fee and gets in line. No one begrudges the guy ahead of them for piling up his plate, he paid and stood just like everyone else. And if he takes the last serving of crab legs, you may be disappointed, but you know the server will be replacing the tray shortly, so you wait a few minutes.
But if, when that server arrives with a brand new tray, and the guy ahead of YOU immediately lifts the entire thing and takes it to his table even though he couldn't POSSIBLY eat half of them, you are going to feel differently. Even though he turns to you and says, "Don't worry, there'll be more...", you know the server isn't going to be immediately replacing it. If you want crab legs you are going to have to wait a lot longer now, perhaps screwing up your other plans for the evening. Or, you can just do without and eat something else...but YOU paid for the buffet too. And Mr. Take-'em-all can't possibly eat the whole tray himself, so yes, the extra legs he took WERE 'taken' from the people behind him in that line, and you can be damn sure they are going to see it that way...
It's an all you can eat buffet. You can go back as many times as you wish. So why not just take what you CAN eat, then if you want more after, go back and refill your plate? Why take more than you can eat at any one time when you can refill your plate any time you want? Why not let the next few people in line get their share now too? It's not like they're taking anything off YOUR plate...you got yours. And you can get as many refills as you want, stuff yourself like a tick if you wish. Sit there like the fat guy from The Meaning of Life...
But let the other paying customers enjoy the buffet too, you fat greedy fuck...
Good call. just ask the guys at WhatsApp.... Those ".1%ers" know just what we need!!!!!
/FUCKING SARC
Tyler, you are dead wrong. Thirty years ago, for every $1 paid by taxpayers, corporations paid $1.25. Now, for every $1 we pay, corporations pay 25 cents--and they often get a refund to boot. It's not a matter of "taking" all the money from the rich, it's that they aren't paying into the system like ordinary citizens, and that means the rest of us peons have to take up the slack.
In case you haven't noticed the spate of articles and interviews, where the really rich are whining about being vilified, or warnings about inequality leading to revolutions, you need to understand the majority of ordinary Americans are talking about pitchforks and guillotines. And ideological crap like yours just makes us madder.
Perhaps some Milton Friedman is in order. Corporations pass that $1.25 or $.25 directly back to you as a consumer or to its employees. You are "taking up the slack" whether you like it or not.
The data says that they passed a good chunk of that out among the corporate officers or they have stashed it offshore in a low tax environment...
WHAT??? So they passed out a good chunk of the taxes owed to the officers who now hold that in offshore banks. Good one!
Same logic as force corporations to pay a minimum wage of $x per hour.
Corporation says ok, since we are paying the fry box $50/hour that order of fries is going to cost $10.
Tax the corporation 80% of revenue.
Corporation says ok, since we pay this tax, order of fries is now $100.
Just growing the economy one tax at a time.
dp
The officers are "owed" hundreds of millions for short term gains at the expense of running the corporation into the ground, so that it gets a bailout from the federal government?
This whole system of bonuses and golden parachutes is a big part of the problem, high risk short term thinking and no care about the long term health of the system.
The real problem is why does 98+ percent of the population think that they are omniscient gods who must force everyone else to live their according to their godlike wisdom?
How about the corporations paying a proper amount of tax and not bribing uh, lobbying politicians to make new laws so they can avoid paying ANY tax
So if you tax a corporation $1.00 who is going to pay for that?
What the fuck are you talking about? Why should a corporation pay any tax? Tax the people that work for the corporation, tax the sale of the goods or services supplied by the corporation, charge fees for corporations to be licensed, and it still isn't enough???
How about we don't tax anybody? Being that it's theft and all.
Corporations are people my freind, just ask Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alieto, and Kennedy.
Businesses should not be subjected to income tax, period. Take away their right to lobby and fund campaigns through special interest in exchange.
People should not be subjected to "income tax" on their wages!
Also, there are no shadowy corporate lobbyists who are begging Congress to raise taxes on other people. Never has been.
This is all the result of certain greedy individuals who made a deal with the devil on Jekyll's Island off the coast of Georgia more than 100 years ago.
abolish billionaires and criminal corporations who write their own rules
Just End the FEd. Everything else will fall into place.
like it always has?
fed is just the symptom of the systematic corruption which is part of the human nature that will always find the ways to dominate. unfortunatelly.
which is why you need to clean house now and then and clear out the latest batch of sociopaths who got to the top
they are quick learners. this will make the parasites stronger and smarter in the long run.
fed is not the system, though it's one of the main tools.
one needs to change the mentality of the people to abolish the system. good luck with that when the media and education is controlled by the few.
What do you want for free? A Rubber Biscuit. Bow, bow, bow.
a cool water sandwich on a Sunday go-to-meetin' bun
and, if it don't bounce back, ... you will go HUNGRY! -bow-bow-bow
Sorry but Armstrong's time is long over. In fact, since out of the Pen he is more of a stooge/tool than anything else. Caveat emptor my fellow Hedgies.
+10
I ignore him completely now. I'm only here for the comments.
I would gladly take a cheeseburger today.
Whimpy
I think Whimpy always holds the cheese.
50% taxation seems to be the Rubicon. Go over that and you have a society of indentured servants. Over 75% taxation and it is a form of slavery.
Accumulated deficits (the national debt) are just deferred taxes... how else is the government going to raise cash to at least service the debt? For most of us debt slavery is already a reality as we must continue to pay present and future expenses.
Anyone know where I can get one of the FSA stickers or a pic of it as shown next to the article? I want to have these distributed around the local hood.
It will wake more people up if they see these proudly displayed on the cars of welfare state deziens.
"Taxes destroy"
Taxes are nothing more than theft of other's production. Theft of production by non-producers reduces returns on production and ultimately production itself.
To take part of a man's labor is to reduce the return on that labor to the man. To take part of a man's production from his machine is to reduce the return on his employed capital invested in the machine AND the labor used to employ the machine.
All theft of production reduces returns on labor and capital and subsequently reduces capital and labor employed and ultimately production.
Taxes destroy production. Taxes destroy people. There is no such thing as "taxes on the wealthy."
Just tax the shit out of non-productive investment. If you don't produce a good, then this tax is for you.
OK, now define without error what is non-productive investment, and the punishment for taxing productive investment in error.
I've got it! We'll invent 2 classes of taxes and give them special names. LOW taxes which may even be negative and call them LAX, as in "This year my tax was LAAaaax!" and high taxes and call it HAX, as in "Holy muthafucka, this year my business got the HAX-chet!"
"theft of other's production"
The oligarchs and banking mafia aren't producers. They're parasites.
I read the article. It is just more rationalization for the current crony capitalism, finanicalised and central bank supported wealth transfer economy. Productivity gains are not reflected in pay to workers, it all goes to the top. The money printing zero interest rate support for asset holders sends nearly all the newly printed cash into the hands of the 1%. Wages fall as productivity rises. etc. etc.
To use the argument that government taxes too much to justify this wealth transfer is a seriously transparent piece of Bull Shit. So, taxes on the wealthy haven't been this low since the 1920's. The last 30 years have seen tax cut after tax cut for top earners. Capital gains have been slashed to their benfit also. Off shore tax havens are used so that the truely rich don't pay shit for taxes.
But, the elite rich always want the US military and spy agencies and the militarized cops to protect them to guard their wealth and life styles. This costs money and lives. Last I looked, poor send their kids to die for the elite's wars. Middle Class do to, and look at a middle class tax bill. They pay, as a % much more than the rich, after all the tax shelters are considered and all the off shore tax havens and low capital gains taxes.
Okay, I understand that some people will accept this article as making a very good point and proof that the rich are badly treated. That only proves that some people will believe anything!
Seriously, how stupid and short sighted does the author think we are? We all know government overspends on bullshit stuff. If so, lets cut the taxes on the rich some more and go to zero capital gains tax. But lets keep taxing the almighty shit out of people working for wages. Yes, lets do that! Fuckn' 'ell!
You lost me on the second sentence. There is no such thing as "Crony Capitalism", only "Crony Communism". "Crony Capitalism" is a term Communists came up with to make Free Market Capitalism sound like a horrible deal. If all you are going to do is listen through your fucking butthole then CNBC is your speed. Wake the fuck up!
You had a good argument going--had my attention, not necessarily agreement, but my attention.
However, why the derision and name-calling? It completely destroyed you initial and well worded argument.
I would agree with you, but at some point things need to get nasty. We didn't get to this point over night, and we certainly didn't get here via a bunch of honest freedom loving folk playing nice. We have very little freedom or privacy left. As far as I'm concerned all communists and the people ignorant enough to fall for their lies can die tomorrow for all I care.
The point is that your argument gets lost when you attack the author.
The audience of your argument is EVERYONE reading his and your comments. One should be attempting to inform them, and, more importantly, get them thinking, not convincing or attacking the author.
When you attack the author, you lose your audience, and therefore fail, even if by some chance you convince the author of your point of view, because you have lost the audience.
With enough derision the truth can become stigmatized and lost. A cursed audience is reticent to change their point of view because doing so risks, subconsciously, validating the names and name callers of the past.--“Don’t close doors, explain where each leads.”
Many years ago when I was gun-control leaning (gun-centralization leaning), I, as is my habit, kept looking for the truth--"pealing the onion." When I realized that gun-control was wrong, I was still subconsciously very resistant to acknowledge that fact because of all of the name calling I had seen in the past by anti-gun-control people. Most, nearly all, people are not conscious enough to recognize such an internal resistance and then overcome it; They will embrace it to the end.
"Truth is like water seeking the sea. We can only help it along."
Turd Frog
you are using words you don't understand to the point you don't understand they are no longer relevant, calling somone a communist lost any meaning after the 50's when it was proven conclusively the word was being used merely to incriminate people for no reason other than to incriminate them. You might want to update your vocabulary to something that actually has meaning in the 21st century, other than that you are a dooch and can generally fuck off with your half wit banality....hope you're in your late seventies. tick tock sister.
You get more stupider by the day. Congratulations! Now your parents can stop calling you a loser.
Right you are.
Fascism - it's what's for dinner.
What is Fascism - John T Flynn - Von Mises - youtube
http://youtu.be/4Ml7-aDXrgQ
Blowjobs. Lots and lots of blowjobs. Don't want to waste time dating, spending pretend money to pretend I care about their feelings.
That's why we have hookers. And, remember, you don't pay a hooker for her services; you pay her to leave.
Give me a boogey man again Martin. Now the rich pay too much (even though proportionally they actually don't). It's all the goobmint's fault, even though the goobmint has been bought over by the moneyed interests. Keep getting distracted Mr. Armstrong. At least you got dough enough to be able to exercise that luxury, being distracted and ignorant.
The rich love the government...........keep it in their back pocket bought and paid for.
You are one crazy MF...
Eat the rich, huh?
I like how the rich (Big Business) bitch about the tax rate when most pay zero. Fuck you.
Big business is just better at beating the tax man than we are. The whole system sucks!
Agreed. If you make more than a couple million per year and pay more than 12%, total in taxes, you should fire your tax lawyer and tax accountant immediately. The loop-holes are provided for and you aren't using them.
TAX REVOLT
Right, we did it before. 1776.
Funny that you quoted Niemoeller's poem, because if we purged socialists, trade unionists, and Jews from all positions of influence, most of our problems would be solved. I have nothing against Jewish dentists, accountants, engineers, etc., but any Jew who holds or desires political power should be deported to Israel.
Socialists and trade unionists have no useful skills, so we'll exile their fat, juicy asses to some hungry African country.
Heil DaveA! Um den Sieg, immer!
Condemn the Nazis all you want, it just gives them more credibility as your system crumbles and white people seek alternatives. Don't expect any support from the Free Shit Army -- they'll wring your white neck as soon as you stop giving them free shit.
#1 tons of us who are under attack are not white at all, Zerohedge has a global participation
#2 white people in general are not under attack, it's specific currencies & worker-classes just under minion-classes who serve the overlords
Under the current system, all white nations must open their doors to all the downtrodden of the world, offering them residence, citizenship, voting rights, and welfare benefits. No such generosity is expected of non-white nations. Anti-racist means anti-white.
National socialism succeeds, or at least fails more slowly than Marxist socialism, because it recognizes that the bonds of blood are much stronger than those of gender or social class.
Aside from Ireland, Scotland & the Nordic countries, there are no white nations. I'm not even sure how to classify England because the people there now migrated in during Roman times. I could guess the people there before were white but it would be only a guess.
America is not a white nation.
Canada is not a white nation.
No nation in Africa is a white nation.
Even Russia is not a white nation.
Nations in southern Europe: not white nations.
You knew that, right?
Jim Donald sort of agrees with you. Ethnic nationalism is all well and good for Italians, Poles, Irish, i.e. genuine ethnic groups. But White Nationalism won't fly until we can all agree on who's "white".
Like the black man in Connecticut convicted of miscegenation in 1924, then acquitted on appeal because his girlfriend, "being from Sicily, can in no way be considered a White Woman."
NONE of those people are doing anything to you.
It's central bankers - and you better believe those in Russia & China aren't Jews;
it's fascists, who are staunchly anti-socialist pro-banker mafia lords;
it's bureaucrat paper shufflers, not actual trade workers nor their unions. You're a fucking idiot, pretty much.
So the government is not honest, but billionaries and coprorations are ? Hoo-boy!
top 100 families on planet = same assets as bottom 1/2 or 3.5 billion people.
one time Asset tax.... not income tax needed here ASAP
I never found 'soak the rich' schemes to be interesting.
No matter how rich others were, what was relevant was how they earned it.
ON THE OTHER HAND,
Now that the purpose of the US monetary and governmental structure has become so clear - and clearly intended as a reverse Robin Hood wealth redistribution scheme from start to finish we have to reconsider terms.
When "Entrepreneurship" means exploitation of government and social connections - rent-seeking, in other words - as often as it means the exploitation of economic opportunity in one place to fill the economic need of another, we have to change the thinking on what it means to 'soak the rich'.
The verb 'To-Earn' is not consistent with the words 'Rent-Seeking'.
Americans love a redistributionist, collectivist, it takes a village society. Just don't call it for what it is. Alinski, Norman Thomas, and their cohorts were absolutely prescient.
Yikes this gets people upset.
Fact: Our tax system exists to keep rich people rich. I know this because I'm a beneficiary of it.
Our so-called progressive tax system is so screwed up it is actually highly regressive.
A flat tax with no deductions of any kind, would be much more progressive than what we have now.
I don't believe most rich people would mind paying their fair share, it just when people start talking about 70% tax rates that they get nervous, because at that point they will do ANYTHING to avoid the taxes.
Even the dreaded Pikety tax would be OK, if it were balanced. Rich people can usually control their income, and therefore control their income taxes. If you had a 1/2% wealth tax combined with a modest flat income tax and a sensible VAT tax, they would just pay it. An asset/wealth tax would make the estate tax unnecessary. The same taxes would be collected on assets after passing to beneficiaires.
Getting mad at rich people is a Marxist dupe. Rich people keep their money in a bank, which immediately loans it out with a multiplier of at least 10. Savings are GOOD for the economy. The average guy saves very little, going from paycheck to paycheck. The banks can't loan it out, because it's always disappearing. The government assumes the average guy is incapable of taking care of himself, and so they save the money for him in the Social Security System. Only the government is just as profligate as our average guy, and they spend it on nonsense.
An economy with no savings will fail.
The problem is the oligarchs have bought the government to rig the game in their favor. The prime example of this being using mass immigration to shift wealth and income to the 1% since the 1965 immigration act. Or put another way the current oligarchy have zero loyalty to the rest of the nation.
So calls to tax the looters are actually a distraction from the real problem which is the looting.
I want free money.
There are plenty of places history and today where high taxes and growth go hand in hand. The story that 'high tax = oppressive government = stagnation' sounds good on paper but is too simple.
And too complex. The actual problem isn't taxes but simply that western economies as a whole have become unproductive in any real sense. Weve turned into giant money spinning machines..it creates a lot of flash and bang and makes a lot of people very rich (cheers to them). The people that don't are kept happy with cheap loans and trinkets...the mortgage-trap.
Upward mobility has ground to a halt, and so has downward mobility (overlooked phenomenon, shitty companies need to go bust, banks need regular runs on them to keep them sharp, idiots shouldn't get promotions). Innovation is not doing very well if you discount all the innovations in financing and dumb ass services like Facebook. Facebook doesn't produce anything...just data, more crap for bullshit analysts to sift through and draw conclusions from everybody knows are bullshit.
So we're not taxing anything productive...which is bad enough but one of those necessary evils, but were taxing companies that produce paper and bullshit data. The income people are taking home from it to spend on anti depressants, which are also taxed..as every other thing you consume.
The real fault isn't tax..its that there's a severe lack of vitality in our economies. If theres that vitality and progress its no problem to siphon a bit off to make sure unlucky people don't have to suffer in the street and get a chance to do right by themselves. Or to fund project that would otherwise go unfunded. If you really need help, you need to be given help..if my taxes pay for that..I'm glad too. The problem is where you're taxing money flows that no longer have anything to do with people producing things and selling them...a product adds value and keeps adding value all the way down the economic food chain where it (ideally) gets recycled (as much as possible). A service doesn't, its just a one time thing.. Unless you pay a subscription, when it becomes a succession of one time things.
Look at the cool jobs now. Banking, being a designer, law, coach. We make drawings of things which the rest of the world makes for us and then we buy it with money we also just sort of draw.
108583838950303037267849438585
Look kids..its a random number on your screen..if I was Janet Yellen you'd all be so fucking rich right now.
What ever the think thanks may tell you...it's not the taxes. Not saying I support high taxes, just that it's a different discussion from the 'whats wrong the world and how to fix it'.