Bosses pocket Trump Tax Windfall

And? What do you want to do? Steal other people's money and redistribute it to people who haven't earned it?

 

Is that all you've got for a reason to rip-off others in a market-economy who work just as hard as you do!

But they don't earn the ridiculous income that you have? In some places, some people call that abject selfishness.

And when it comes to fighting a war somewhere (SUPPOSEDLY TO DEFEND THE NATION) it's their kids that die or are wounded but not yours at university.

But IF THEY SURVIVE military service then, yes, the government pays for their postsecondary education! When instead such education should be free, gratis and for nothing to all. In order to get them a decent job with a decent salary and avoid a lifetime earning the Minimum Wage!

It is amazing that a country as rich as ours cannot conceive that both Healthcare and a Suitable Education should be "givens". For the benefit of the nation as a whole ...

 

Rip off?

No, that's not how the rich got their wealth.

 

Right! It's called a rip-off!

It should be highly taxed and returned to the community in the form of a National Healthcare Service and a Free Tertiary Education.

What is TRULY LAMENTABLE in this story is that in 1776 we fought a Revolutionary War to get away from a King (and his acolytes) who were ripping-off the "colonies" by pocketing the wealth of a newly found land.

And for what? To generate Our Own Group of rich-acolytes ripping off by means of ultra-low taxation the Wealth of the land, whilst 30 million fellow Americans strive to make a bare existence below the Poverty Threshold.

The time will come when America will have a Second Awakening. Let's hope it does not end in bloodshed. Even if justified ... !

PS: And you cannot say to anyone that you were not warned!

 

Except, taxes were lowered for every bracket so your statement is invalid in regards to the tax cuts under Trump. The wealthy deserve tax breaks just like the poor, that is how capitalism thrives here.

Besides, our wealthy pay more in taxes than the poor.

If "France" is so great, why did Paris riot (for days!) in regards to your increased taxes?

 

But also: Anyone who has taken a good course in history should know that there was once a pre-revolutionary colonial existence on the eastern coast where all the "states" were subservient to a British King. The "colonies" were his Piggy Bank. Other European countries had their colonies elsewhere. Spain in South America. France in Canada.

That colonial subservience of course no longer exists. It has changed shape and called elsewise, but it still exists!

Do tell me how today's millionaires and billionaires are really any different. They do not own the land, but we are no longer in the Agricultural Age and that is no longer where riches today are derived. The rich evolved to own the means of Industrial Production. But that too is not as wealth-generating as it once was.

Today those riches are earned from a myriad of investments made in numerous ways. (The Internet is awash with billionaires.) And the "how" does not really matter. The "why" now matters greatly.

What is key finally is that we are all born into the same national community. We all deserve a decent living. Not all at the same standard, because both ambition and capacity must earn their "just rewards" in a fair market-economy.

The real problem is in the unfairness of the "Just Rewards". Because they are unreasonable and because they can be manipulated by taxation, which has happened with the aberrant manner in which upper-income taxation was relaxed in the postwar years! It was a great mistake of America to do reduce upper-income taxation, which released immense the wealth of a dynamic economy (regardless of its ups-and downs) to a select group of families. And the lack of suitable Inheritance Taxation has allowed that money to easily roll down the family line.

The only solution to that problem is increased upper-income taxation! But first Americans must realize that it is a problem. And for the moment that is nowhere in the cards.

We as a nation are infatuated by Great Wealth, which is no different historically from Europe when it too had an elitist class that possessed most of a country's assets ... !

 

Right but the Trump Tax-breaks were unfair! Get your facts right!

For a proper assessment of Donald Dork's tax-breaks for the rich, see here: Five good reasons it doesn't feel like the Trump Tax Cut Benefitted You

And this simple reasoning:

Oh, really? Wow, what a surprise!

But the Trump Tax-breaks were unfairly weighted for the upper-classes! He reduced taxes for this class because THEY WILL BE FINANCING HIS NEXT REELECTION!

Moreover, for a proper assessment of Donald Dork's tax-breaks for the rich, see here: Five good reasons it doesn't feel like the Trump Tax Cut Benefitted You

Oh wow, have YOU GOT THAT WRONG!

Those who were rioting at first where the ones wearing the Yellow Jackets. These were the mostly unemployed because France has high unemployment rates at present.

Then a great number of rambunctious and hot-headed youths rioted. Which derives from (1) they are the lowest income classes and these "kids" rioted given the ongoing high rate of Unemployment in France, and (2) they cannot find work because (just like anywhere in most developed economies) truly remunerative work requires a higher intellectual standard nowadays.

Two to three hundred of them have passed before a judge and about 50 are going to jail for damages done. (The French police have put up cameras in all the likely places for public demonstrations.)

 

What do you mean they're not applied? Just recently Sprint and T-Mobile talked about merging and the Trump DOJ threw cold water on their proposal.

For you, perhaps, but not me. I spent a good part of my adulthood watching hundreds of millions of unfortunate human beings lose their lives, liberty and prosperity on account of the utopian pursuit of universal equality, and do you know why they failed, my friend? A theme that runs through the works of William Faulkner and his explorations into the catastrophe that befell the Antebellum South and its people is that Man cannot defy Nature with impunity. That's why the self-styled geniuses who sought to impose socio-economic equality on the people around them failed in such a destructive and spectacular fashion - in their arrogance they thought they could defy Nature - most particularly our own - with impunity. Inequality is a fact of Man and Nature, and as some Nazarene pointed out 2000 years ago it will always be with us.

Of course, this speaks to the fundamental difference between the Left and the Right since the French Revolution - Equality vs. Liberty (or Freedom, if you prefer).

"Unfair"?

Unequal, perhaps, but not unfair, and I just answered your question. In America we value Liberty/Individual Freedom over Equality/Equal Outcomes, which is one of the main reasons why the Founders and Framers established a limited form of government that was designed to protect and preserve our liberty and individual freedom. If you read my signature you'll find that the Founders were well aware of the ideas and agenda of the proto-socialists in Europe and they wanted nothing to do with that.

That's a wonderful theory, but many Americans, including myself and my family, have pulled themselves out of poverty. The same can be said of millions of other Americans over the years - the notion that we live in a stratified society where upward mobility is impossible and people don't have a "fair shot" at improving themselves and their lives is the lie that self-serving politicians like Barack Obama peddle in order to justify the ever-increasing expansion of government and government dependency.

How convenient.

While I agree with you that no one in their right-mind thinks that all incomes must be the same, we do have a lot of irrational people in this country and some of them are running for the Democratic nomination for president. One has gone so far as to post an article on his website proclaiming that the American Dream and higher, more equitable standards of living are more likely to be obtained in socialist basket-cases like Venezuela than here in "unfair" capitalist America. Little wonder he has earned the praises of the CPUSA. I take it you haven't read Jean-François Revel's La Grande Parade, either - there are a lot more of these irrational people out there than you appear willing to admit.

Thanks for taking the time to post that for me, but I'm not wondering what Income Disparity or Wealth Inequality are.

Again, it appears that you and I look at this issue and presumably how to solve it differently. For example, I would agree that a lot of corporate CEOs are being paid far more than they're worth, but I think that's something that the directors, shareholders and customers of those companies need to realize and address, not the government. On the flip side of that, I support a minimum wage, but not one that is so high it exceeds the value of the employee's contribution to the company and discourages businesses to hire low-skilled individuals or replace them with machines. Furthermore, while I'm not willing to live in a Dickensian nightmare and am glad to help the truly needy, I recognize that our government has gone far beyond that. Today, it is far too large, far too intrusive and far too expensive, and at times it has threatened and eviscerated the freedoms and rights it is supposed to defend and preserve.

You're free to dismiss my comments about the importance of personal/individual responsibility, whether it pertains to guns, our diet or the socio-economic conditions in our country but this is something that we need more of in this country, not less.

 

So you agree that you omitted out the truth, told a half truth expect me to agree with you that the tax cuts were unfair? Sorry, you started the conversation based on a false premise which makes anything you say or believe in highly suspect. Besides that, I have seen the numbers posted right here in this thread and know what you state is untrue.

I also don't think taking advice from the French is a really good idea for Americans, especially when it comes to the economy. It's one of two subjects that the French should steer clear of. The other being: "How to win a war." We are better at capitalism than you are. You have outrageous unemployment issues (9.1% last time I looked.....Yikes!!!), overwhelming taxes, which are causing riots and a poor population with huge immigration problems. In fact, even the wine and food industry has suffered for the past 25-30 years due to your economic troubles. A lot of chefs and wine makers would rather work in Napa or abroad where they are more economically prosperous, than in France. I think I read a statistic a while back that stated more French chefs would rather work in Las Vegas than in France.

Your rise in terrorist activity is alarming as well. I guess the mass immigration is overwhelming France with poor, uneducated or indoctrinated elements that are surely not helping.

 

Since he's not alive to defend himself, let's hear from the man who reduced the obscenely high tax rates we used to have in this country:





Ever wondered how the Washington DC area went from an economic backwater to one of the wealthiest regions in the country as the size of the federal government and the taxpayer money flowing into it exploded after President Kennedy's death?

Furthermore, despite the trillions of dollars that have been spent on the Great Society and War on Poverty Programs that were enacted after JFK's assassination, not to mention the programs established by FDR before him, the federal government remains peculiarly unable to achieve the lofty goals that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington set out for themselves so many years ago. Could it be because they wound up creating a massive welfare class that is mired in government dependency and the poverty that comes with it instead of lifting the poor out of poverty? Could it be that the government facilitated problems, such as the ones Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted back in 1965, creating more poverty and economic inequality?:

From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder -- most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure -- that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable.

Et cetera.

Could it be that the problems of poverty, wealth inequality and, yes, human nature, are too complex to be solved by merely throwing money at them?

Could it be that there's more to that personal/individual responsibility thing I've been talking about than "blah blah blah"?

 

if you got this lesson above it was from the post-WW2 communist Eastern countries, who have now shifted to the market-economy of the European Union.

Some people take a while to learn that lesson about Socialism. But, that experience did not prevent them from calling their present system in the EU a "Social Democracy".

Compared to the US, that looks darkly at any usage of the world social that is not related to a Church Social activity.

I think my fellow Yanks are yet another version of that "need to know and learn" group. Especially on this forum, where the malarkey flows thickly ...

 

If you want to complain about the political history of the US over the past 30/40 years then you and I and all Americans will find the answer by looking in a mirror.

Even with a cockamamey Gerrymandering and Electoral College, if we wanted, really wanted, to redo government we could.

But, if a people, can wake up after the most serious Economic Disaster since the last one in 1929 and call it a Great Recession, but still vote a Replicant in as PotUS (despite the fact that he actually LOST the popular-vote -- then you can wake up to the stark reality that the US is NOT the greatest-nation-on-earth!

And even far from it. So, shall we call it politely "Work In Progress" ... ?

PS: The present problem with America is its tendency for the superlative "great" or "greatest". We should junk that word.

 

I paid about $14K less thanks to Trump. I'm sure lots of Democratic voters don't even pay income tax.

 

It was certainly junked when Obama was POTUS.

 

The only people who rip-off citizens are thieves and government.

 

It's a simple matter of economics and human nature, really, and while Ludwig von Mises addressed the former and Faulkner addressed the latter, former socialists such as David Horowitz have addressed the deeper psychological and spiritual aspects of the utopian impulse to create an impossible world for an impossible humanity. Others have attributed it to a more mundane manifestation of a psychological disorder that compels people to seek power and control over others. What I've learned from own observations and reflections is that these impulses are often nothing more than pure Nihilism - destruction for destruction's sake. We've seen this in revolutionary France and Dostoevsky wrote about in pre-revolutionary Russia. We saw it again in Anarchist Catalonia before the Spanish Civil War and now we're seeing glimpses of it here in America. I guess you could say I got that lesson from a lot of different people in a lot of different places.

Some people never learn, LafayetteBis, hence the repetition of past mistakes and Revel's book.

Of course, one has to be careful about making generalizations here. Socialism comes in many different forms. The democratic socialism of Clement Attlee's UK is different from the socialism of Stalin's USSR which is different from the quasi-socialism in the USA that helps keep the elderly widow's food on the table and a roof over her head.

I think most of your fellow Yanks know all they need to know about socialism and some of us could probably teach you a thing or two about it, too. But as Mark Twain once put said, "The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane".

 

How about "Greatest Work in Progress on Earth"?

Works for me...

 

No doubt. Which says a lot about "you" ...

 

Some people do learn.

Europe shucked Socialism for Social Democracy. It took a while, but now the EU is a nation that functions along by means of capitalism AND provides a decent lifestyle for its population of more than 500 million.

 

More one-liner nonsense.

Moving right along ...

 

Even more one-liner nonsense!

Hey, you're really good at it ... !

 

What is incorrect about my statement?

 

How many people did you hire with it?

 

Yet another one who is unaware of a history they lived through personally.

So, I will remind you:
*Obama was handed on a platter the SubPrime Mess AND the resulting Great Recession (from a Replicant Administration). Unemployment was skyrocketing.
*He passed the ARRA spending-bill and spiked unemployment at 10%.
*Having done so, we, the sheeple, thanked him by voting the HofR in control of the Replicants.
*Who proceeded to refuse all further stimulus-spending that was absolutely needed to spark new jobs.
*So, the economy was stagnant for the next four years - it created jobs only to replace those lost
*See the Bureau of Labor Statistics chart of the Employment-to-population Ratio here and note how it stagnated from 2010 to 2014.
*And why did the Replicants refuse stimulus-spending (which had spiked a plummeting employment rate)?
*Because from 2010 to the presidential elections of 2012, they were trying to sink Obama's reputation.
*But that trick didn't work did it?
*Nonetheless, who suffered most? The Replicant Party or those fellow Americans who could not find a decent job from 2010 to 2014 ...

Answer that last question and - for a change on this forum - we might have a decent exchange of opinion ...