Dole asking Kerry about Nam.

If you have even the most basic sense of fairness and equity you will agree that there is no excuse for shouldering the top one percent of income earners in this country with 38% of our total income tax burden when they earn 17 of our total income.

This morning I engaged in a bit of fantasy. I thought about some things I would like to hear either a Republican or Democratic presidential candidate say during a major speech:

nice bush commercial......

I read it. I just have a large problem with the nature of the war on drugs, and what we define as a drug for our society.

Other than that I think the part about solving the war on drugs intelligently is good.

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If you have even the most basic sense of fairness and equity you will agree that there is no excuse for shouldering the top one percent of income earners in this country with 38% of our total income tax burden when they earn 17 of our total income.

This part sucks. You act as if the lives of the rich are affected in any substantialway by the taxes they pay. If someone making a million a year has to pay an extra 75k in taxes, I really couldn't give a damn. Hell, I think they should pay MORE than they do now; the rich have formed a new gentry here in America, and they act just like the old English gentry used to; as if they are above the law, and always bemoaning how much money they have to pay for things as if their life is in any way difficult... makes me sick.

Cycloptichorn

And as for you attitude toward "The Rich," your envy is showing.

Oh for the power to change reality just for the purpose of these discussions. I would love to see how Cyclopitchorn the millionaire would feel about the equity of the tax structure.

Just how heavily would you tax the rich? To the point where their personal wealth was no greater than the average American? To the point where they have no incentive to take risks which average Americans shun?

The American Rich bear very little resemblance to the English Gentry.

Conservatives give more of their own money to private programs and churches to assist poor people. Plus, they pay taxes.

One of the major problems with the rich? While they are big on philanthropy (which is good), they are small on fixing the system which causes the need for philanthropy in the first place (which is bad).

Your Republican benefactor wouldn't have to donate that money if the arts were properly funded in the first place. Now, that might make his taxes go up some, but as long as they don't go up by 50k the net effect is the same, correct?

Heh.

I grew up moderately poor. I mean, we had enough food to eat, and an okay house but that was it. I didn't get new stuff all the time like my friends did, and these were lower-middle class friends I'm talking about.

Over the course of my life, my parents began to earn more money than they did before, and we eventually moved to a new neighborhood and I went to a new high school. It just so happened that there were a lot of rich kids at the high school I went to, and do you know what I found out?

None of them were any happier than I was. Sure, they had nicer stuff, but something like 7/10 of their parents were divorced. Their flashy cars and big houses didn't mean a damn thing to me - I wouldn't have traded the closeness of my family, the laughter around my dinner table for any amount of money.

And I still wouldn't. I don't make much money, not because I can't (I think that many of the posters on A2K could make a great living as writers, BTW) but because I really don't think money makes you happy. At all. It just gives you a prettier car, a bigger house. I don't really need those things.

Well, I didn't really expect you to respond: "Yep, you nailed me...I'm green with envy over the rich."

Someone who is happy, can still be happy in a big house and a pretty car.
Money may not buy happiness but it doesn't necessarily purchase misery.



No. Quit appealing to extremes in order to try and kill my argument. I never said I wanted to move to socialism (I wouldn't mind talking about that, but it deserves another thread), but I feel that in many cases taxation is a numbers game that does not take into account basic survivability.

For example. A man with 3 million in assets, making an additional 500k a year, can soak up an extra 100k in taxes per year and see almost no reduction in his life whatsoever. Sure, he may not be able to afford that yacht now, but who cares? Not me.

Of course you don't care. You've made that clear. You've made it clear that you believe that no one has the right to acquire a level of affluence beyond that which you deem seemly. Wealth is created when people take risks. People don't take risks for the same rewards they can obtain from not taking risks. The yacht that you sneer at may signifiy the level of affluence required for an individual to take the risk, you and I would never dare.

WHile there is a small slice of American Aristocracy among the American Rich (Kennedys for example), most American millionaires are either self made men and women or their first generation offspring who were alive during their parent's harder times.

For every American millionaire there are probably hundreds of Americans who took the same risks and failed. The majority of American milionaires could very easily be numbered among the failures if their luck hadn't been as good as it was.

These people are taking risks you will not take. You can rationalize that you could be as rich as them if you cared about money but that's simply not true. All the talent in the world is meaningless unless one is willing to take risks.

Whereas a poor man, with 30k in assets, who makes 25k a year and sees his taxes go up by 20%, can no longer afford to live his life. The rich should give more becaue they can.

This is a specious argument as it assumes that we must have X amount of tax revenues and that if the contribution of the rich is reduced the contribution of the middle or lower classes will rise. Because the middle and lower class cannot afford to pay more in taxes doesn't require the rich to. It requires us to control our governmental spending.

But that 100k, in aggregate, taken from the richest people in America, would add up to huge amounts of money that could be used to help educate the families that are victims of generational poverty, to help change the cycle that I saw around me so much while growing up - parents who didn't succeed, who never teach their children to, etc.

We already pay for public education to educate all of our families. If public education is not doing the job it should (and this is arguably true) pouring more money into is not going to change anything.

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The American Rich bear very little resemblance to the English Gentry.

How can you even say this? They exist in a completely different world than the poor. They believe in philanthropy but not in changing the system which neccessitates philanthropy. They even use titles (Dr, PhD, The III) in order to distinguish themselves. They have servants, estates, vacation homes, all the trappings of gentry.

You are being absolutely ridiculous with this.

Of course they live in a different world than the poor. The healthy live in a completely different world than the sick. This doesn't make them a ruling class.

My brother has a PhD and makes about 85,000 a year as an educator. Is he a member of the American Gentry? The man shining shoes at the airport can just as easily be a "III" as the grandson of William J Getty. I know a number of couples with combined incomes of about $300,000 a year and they have someone clean their homes once a week - a servant?

The real test is to ask the English Gentry if they believe there is an American Gentry. They'll choke on their brandy before answering.

To return to my original point, however:
I'm not envious of those with money. I wouldn't really want to be rich; I think I'd probably be less happy than I am now! I consider myself to be one of the happiest people I ever met; even my bad days aren't that bad. What would I do with a bunch of money? Buy stuff I don't need? Unlike some others, greed is not the motivation in my life.

That being said, I think there are numerous ways in which the rich could finance programs to help the poor to a much greater extent than they currently do now.

Of course they can...so can you, but do you want anyone to force you to do so?
Cycloptichorn

I think it is a bit risky to generalize about the behavior of "the rich" or "the poor" for that matter. Individual choices and behaviors do count for a great deal here.

There is no shortage of data to suggest that government subsidies of anything generally yield less quality and effort on the part of those so subsidized in nearly any undertaking.

Government can help create conditions that enhance the rewards for effort and enterprise, but it cannot deliver programs that substitute for the absence of these critical elements.

People can say all they want about how much churches do and how little government does, but it is all a bunch of huey. Before government decided to help the needy; the poor died and couldn't go to the doctor and all that sort of thing.

Don't get me wrong, i am all for anyone wanting to help the poor, be it a church or an individule or whatever. It just can't be a substitute for government help. There is a sure fire system in place through government that does not depend on the whims or the temporary goodwill of volunteers. It is like the difference between having a steady job or doing odd jobs wherever you can find it.

The socialist attempts to do so have generally cost the people their freedom and resulted in near-poverty for all.