Where is the US economy headed?

As businesses get more profitable, they hire more employees in order to get even richer.

This is a false assumption not reflected by reality. Many businesses get FAR richer, and their investors get richer, while NOT hiring more employees.

The last two years have proven this to be completely true. Business profits have risen, in some cases tremendously, all while shedding employees at a great rate. The business owners and investors are profiting and seeing their profits rise with no corresponding rise in jobs for 'everyone else.'

I predict you will have no good response to this fact.

I predict you will have no good evidence to support your claim that my claim "is a false assumption not reflected by reality. Many businesses get FAR richer, and their investors get richer, while NOT hiring more employees."
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okie wrote:

Its time you pay your fair share, pom. People are fed up with your attitude of gimme gimme gimme and gimme some more.

How about we change the tax system in the US to one based on property? We simply take at the rate of 5% of everyone's wealth. Does that sound fair to you okie?

That would mean the top 1% would pay 90% of the taxes. Fairness is equality, isn't it okie?

Tax everyone at the same rate.

It is also true that the American many are supporting an all consuming few: the top 1%.

Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.[1]

During those years, the Piketty-Saez data also show, the inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households.

parados wrote:

okie wrote:

Its time you pay your fair share, pom. People are fed up with your attitude of gimme gimme gimme and gimme some more.

How about we change the tax system in the US to one based on property? We simply take at the rate of 5% of everyone's wealth. Does that sound fair to you okie?

Obviously not, it is not fair, and it is not constitutional either.

Quote:

That would mean the top 1% would pay 90% of the taxes. Fairness is equality, isn't it okie?

Karl Marx thought equality of wealth was fairness, so that puts you into elite company, parados. I don't happen to join you in that camp, but perhaps Obama would keep you company?

Quote:

Tax everyone at the same rate.

That would be a wealth tax, not an income tax, parados.

I doubt that would fly, especially with folks like George Soros. Actually Soros is not at the top, he is only worth maybe 14 billion, so we could only get maybe 700 million out of him if we taxed him a paltry 5% of his wealth. However, we might get 4 billion out of the Walton family, 2 billion out of Warren Buffett, and 2.5 billion out of Bill Gates.

Just think, at that rate, the government could break every citizen of the country completely after about 20 or 30 years. What a wonderful plan you have there, parados!! We could all be equally miserable, just like they are in Cuba or North Korea. Where do you learn such wisdom?

I'm not sure that "supporting" is the word I'd have used, but pom is certainly right that the top 1% are kind of sucking the air out of the rest of us:

..... Someone that has $100 in wealth would pay $5 and someone that has $1,000,000,000 in wealth would pay $5,000,000. That would not make the 2 people equal in wealth. It would only mean they paid an equal percentage of their wealth. The elephant you seem to want to avoid okie (or perhaps you just missed it) is that the top 1% have 90% of the wealth in the US.
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ROFLMAO.. You don't seem to understand basic math here okie. No one would go broke using that system. If a person never made a single dollar and had $100 or $1,000,000,000 to start with, in 100 years they would NOT have zero dollars. Losing 5% of total wealth at the end of each year while never earning a dime, a person that started with $1,000,000,000 would still have $8,000,000 after 50 years. Of course if you have $1,000,000,000 you only need to earn 5% interest to have the same dollar amount forever. If you earn 8% which is the average return on the Stock market you would have $4,380,000,000 after 50 years.

I learned my "wisdom" in algebra class okie. Where did you learn your idiocy?

Even assuming the wealth stayed static in value, the 5% annual tax would render $100 to be worth about $77 after 5 years, about $60 after 10 years, about $36 after 20 years, about $13 after 40 years, and less than $8 after 50 years. That would not make you completely broke, but pretty close to it.

Obviously it should not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if some of ones wealth is in real estate, or perhaps in a business, pretty soon you would have to sell the real estate, perhaps your home, or a business, to pay the wealth tax.