House set to pass new "hate crime."

How much is that as a % of their income?

If they make 10 times as much then it's a push.

More than that, then....

 

I never said the top 1% create most of the jobs in the country. I said the rich create a high percentage of jobs in the country. Of course the top 1% don't create most of the jobs in the country. You are trying to limit the frame of this discussion so your point squeezes through.

How do the rich achieve this if they are only lying around collecting checks (no swab of stereotyping there)...?

The rich buy stuff. Lots of stuff. Stuff made by companies. Companies who hire low wage and middle-class workers. The rich also like to invest their money to make it grow. They invest in things like: struggling companies with good ideas. Large companies with thousands of employees. Start-up companies run by high school grads with geeky ambitions. Etc Etc.

The rich also like to give away their money. I know, I know, they are all lazy trust fund babies, so why give away money? Tax breaks. In order to pay a lower tax rate, they just give away large sums of their money to charities. I would be willing to bet that the percentage of charitable contributions across incomes is very closely shadowed by the percentages of taxpayers that I posted above.

You cannot penalize success in a free market. Then you end up like France, working 32 hr weeks with no possibility of being fired. I don't want to be like France. People need to know that if you work hard enough, you will be rewarded. The government didn't put the risk into what it took to make that wealth: why should they be able to take most of it?

 

They worked for it, they keep it. What right does the govt have to determine how much money is too much for one family to have?

And why do we have to coddle the poor anyway? 95% of the poor are that way because they are either stupid or lazy, or have no ambitions of making money. The class system is an incentive to rise from the vat of crapulence that is the lower class. As long as the possibility of class mobility is built into the economic system, this is the way things should be. I came from a struggling blue collar family. Through hard work I have managed to do very well for me and my family. Why should some dumbass welfare recipient be entitled to the same life of (pseudo) luxury I can afford? Or rather, why should my income be punished in order to make it closer to the welfare recipient? Call me an elitist snob, but I don't want to go to places where poor people are. I don't want to talk to them. I don't want them near my neighborhood, and I don't want to go into theirs. Yep, Im an ass, but an honest ass. But good for them if they are working hard trying to make something of themselves.

If someone is a hard worker they can achieve anything in America. People don't want to do this, though. They'd rather just take it from the people who did work hard for what they have. That's why my money will be in tax shelters if I'm ever a millionaire. Have you seen what the govt does with our money? They spend billions of it putting potheads in jail, and give the rest of it away to lazy ass people sitting on their porches all day. Screw that, I'd rather give it away to Vegas.

 

Your point was that the rich paid 10 times as much tax.

Your inference was that they paid a lot more money. Which they do.

My point was that it is not as great of a % of their incomes.

I have no problem with the points that you raise. In some ways my economic background is similar to yours. I too detest the money that is given to folks who squander it away without any real chance of a better life, as they did not learn the lessons that they should have in their lives. Work hard, sacrifice the short term joy for the long term gain, and have some pride in supporting yourself and your family. I have members of my own family that haven't learned those lessons yet.

In some ways our society is like a pro team. If a player is making bank, sometimes they will share that to sign another player to make their team a champion. IMO in some ways our system to support the poor in this country is like that, we cut a deal so that they still believe in society, the goodness of those who are better off than them. The issue with that is that some folks will cheat, and the govt doesn't have the resources to prevent it.

The problem that you could eventually run into (by eliminating welfare, etc.) has parallels in other countries that lose great masses of the middle class is open class warfare. Rich folks would live in fear of the poor, and society as we know it would cease to exist. I think that it is our best interests to keep that possibility at bay.

The flat tax or sales tax ideas are ones that need to be investigated.

They both pose interesting viewpoints.

 

No one would question the need for a strong middle class. That is not the point. The point is that the Democrats have for decades now painted a picture of affluent Americans as barriers to the dreams of lower income Americans. It is as if they want Americans to believe that the only way wealthy Americans became wealthy was by taking money out of the pockets of the less-affluent. They constantly try to create a "we-they" mentality among Americans. There is no question that there are several economic classes in this country. At the top are the very wealthy, and at the bottom are the very poor. Now everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, want to see the poor advance. But they differ in how they want to achieve that. The Democrats want to do it through federal spending - entitlement programs that would only serve to make more people dependent on the federal government. That is why I refer to the Democratic Party as the party of dependency. Democrats believe a nation can spend its way to prosperity despite the evidence that that is simply not true. The Republicans feel that the best way to raise the standards of the poor is not by taking wealth away from others, but by creating opportunities for everyone.

 

How are the republicans doing this?