Obama '08?

I wish.

Isn't a poor person's life worth as much as rich guy's life? That was my point, which of course escapes you again. And what good is a rich guy's mansions, yachts, and airplanes if he is dead anyway? It isn't about property, it is about life and liberty.

People making less use the welfare system more, so shouldn't they pay more?
People making less use Medicaid more, so shouldn't they pay more for the extra cost?
People making less may actually use the highways more to go back and forth to Walmart several times per day, so shouldn't they pay for road maintenance more? I think highway usage more by rich people is a theory yet to be substantiated. Besides, all those delivery trucks hauling plastic junk to Walmart to be sold are not all for rich people, thats for sure.
People making less drive less efficient older cars, which spew more pollution into the atmosphere, thus causing more environmental damage.
People making less may be more inclined to burn wood to heat their homes, thus causing more pollution into the atmosphere.
People that make very much less, so as they pay absolutely nothing in taxes, shouldn't they receive absolutely no government service whatsoever?
Many people that are net recipients of tax money, the ones that receive thousands more back than they pay in, shouldn't they pay for all of that money that it is costing the taxpayers paying for that?
Fact is squinney, people making less may consume just as much or more in terms of food, in fact they may be consuming unhealthy stuff like hamburgers, fries, potato chips, and beer, which costs society and the government billions to treat the health problems stemming for poor living habits. The poor may also be more likely to smoke, which only adds to the costs. And what about drug use?

I have heard your argument before about rich people getting more services, but frankly I think it doesn't hold water, besides, the richest among us pay virtually all of the income tax, far more than the services that they receive compared to other people that are freeloading off of them.

I was thinking the same thing. I don't own a $50,000 dollar car and never will. Nor do I even own a $25,000 car. Mine have all been used cars and trucks lately. If you own a higher priced car, the collision and comprehensive coverage is much higher according to the value. I am not sure, but liability might be similar to lower priced cars.

The point is, that people that own yachts, expensive cars, and boats, are already paying dearly for the privilege of owning them, because of higher sales taxes, licensing, insurance costs, and other fees. And has anyone had their cadillac fixed lately to know how much the repair bills can be?

I dont know where you live but I pay the same rate for car liscense on my 1988 buick as some guy with a 2010 cady. I do get a break on car insurance because of the age of my car. I was being factitious Okie.

I think that must be fairly unusual, rabel. In Colorado where I now spend most of my time, there is a very stiff ownership tax on car licensing, which can run hundreds of dollars for a new or newer car. I am actually not sure what the situation is in Oklahoma right now. I spend time there but do not have my vehicles licensed there right now.

You are brilliant! That is a great argument. From here on out, you are Goddess Squinney.

Not only does this statement stem from faulty logic, it reflects the writer's unfamiliarity with the real world.


My above comment applies here.


I know that the average Walmart customer can be from any level of society. While the store in this instance was K-Mart, many years ago, when their son began prep school, photos of The Donald and estranged wife Evana were plastered all over the wires as they were photographed leaving a K-Mart after buying bedding and other dorm supplies at K-Mart.

Furthermore, despite the fact that I will make less than $23,000 this year, I never shop at Walmart. I disapprove of the company. I did, once, do a comparison shopping run there when I was painting my living room. The same supplies that were carried at the independently owned paint store were there . . . at the same prices.

Finally, considering how common and vulgar the taste you demonstrate here is there is no reason why you should decry the plastics sold at Walmart, particularly since you have demonstrated a lack of care for the environment.


You imply that is a choice.


This statement is not verifiable.

My ex-husband holds a doctorate in chemistry and worked in sales and marketing for high tech companies, bringing home what the average American father grossed. We heated partially with wood at our first house as an environmental measure.


Despite earning in the high teens and low twenties since 2007 (worked at a retail store, substitute taught, co-wrote and edited a teacher's manual, temped at a business school and taught at community college), I have always had to pay taxes. Earnings have to be at the christine o'donnell level to not pay taxes.


Where is your source for the above? My food comes directly from several farms, some of which I can walk to. It is true that places like the Salinas Valley, immortalized by John Steinbeck, are totally without farmers' markets and have few supermarkets, forcing the agricultural workers exploited to put ice berg lettuce on your table to eat solely at McDonalds. However, from the 1960s on when people organized food co-ops to today when the only home gardens and backyard chicken co-ops are tended by lower earning workers, it is not true that all of AMerica's poor and marginal people eat unhealthy food.
Think of the fat lawyers and the fat women who are earning the second professional salary.

Saying the poor are more likely to smoke is something you pulled out of the air. As for drugs, sure, there are meth labs aplenty among people on the bottom of the economic scale but those folks might be turning to manufacturing meth because there jobs were sent overseas by the top 1%, who can afford cocaine and imported Scotch.

Wow! This comes from the same hypocrite who in his previous post decried the poor for driving environmentally harmful older cars! Will wonders ever cease?

I knew my post congratulating squinney would be voted down. Wow! The wingnuts are against deserved admiration and polite conversation.

POMade knows nothing about having a 'polite conversation'.

If it isn't about property then why are you complaining about the rich paying more?

I thought about this post for a minute then became aware of the one thing that everyone today seems to forget, including me: that today's "poor" are not the people we would commonly label as poor.

Because real wages for the majority of working Americans, quantified at 80% by the US Census Bureau, have remained virtually unchanged for 30 years, many people with solid middle-class attitudes and aspirations are now among the poor.

Their middle-class values are at odds with their situations but their middle class training should make them less vulnerable than the traditional poor.

My first job out of college was as a welfare case worker. When we were trained, we were advised to help our clients budget, to warn them that if, when the welfare check came, they bought pork chops, they would not have enough money for food to last until the next paycheck.

Such advice fights against human nature: when you are deprived for long, a small luxury such as a pork chop, now obtainable, is purchased. That was, in fact, the practical advice in the 1980s when Baby Boomers were told that they would not have the standard of living their parents had, so we might as well enjoy a latte and gourmet cookies because we were not going to be able to take that trip to Europe.

I wrote on these boards (or their predecessor) several years back that I was no longer middle-class because of what I could not afford. Several of the women (perhaps the crones?) wrote back that being middle-class is a mental and not an economic state.

I thoroughly disagree: it is an economic state. However, it may be that all the aging hippie chicks, who baked bread and made homemade soup from the veggies purchased at the food co-op may survive this economy better than the traditional poor of the mid- (not the early!) 20th C. could.

okie, If your argument is about "life" and not assets, why are you against the wealthy paying more in taxes? After all, money is not life! You are not only confused, but dead wrong!

LOL! Neither do most Oklahoman's!!

When visiting family in August my sister and I were shocked by all the cars in parking lots with expired tags. It doesn't seem to be enforced, either.

Ooops, thanks for your post that reminded me to paste my 2010 tag on my car.

BBB

You plainoldme, are a leftist liberal by definition. You advocate stealing from the wealthy and giving it to the unwealthy! You call that fair!

Wow!, and here I thought you liked Pelosi

I was responding to squinney's claim that rich people receive more government services, which is a claim often put forth by liberals. I challenge that for several reasons, one of them being that what the federal government is supposed to be doing as one of its primary responsibilities is national security and enforcement of our rights under the constitution, and so I rightly pointed out that regardless of assets, a person's rights and life should be equal.

Also it should be abundantly obvious to anyone that if everyone paid as much tax as higher income people, the federal government would be rolling in money, so much in fact that even the Demcrats might have a tougher time trying to figure out how to spend it all. The obvious truth is that it is the rich and wealthier that are paying the vast majority of income tax in this country. Blaming them for the budgetary incompetence in D.C. is frankly insulting and silly.

"Often put forth by liberals?" And, your answer is? Those are facts that cannot be denied. What has liberal facts have to do with this subject? When you use the word "equal," you are using it with your own interpretation which means you are too damn ignorant to know better.

Citizen A owns $100,000 in assets.
Citizen B owns $10,000,000 in assets.
Who benefits more from national defense? Citizen A or Citizen B?

One of the biggest expense for our federal government is national defense.

If they were taxes at 10% of their asset value, Citizen A would pay $10,000, and Citizen B would pay 1,000,000.

Why isn't this happening if all are equal?