[Newsbot]

Title: Hang the rich: Great war inevitable, pundit predicts
Category: Law & Order
Posted By: Scape
Date: 2011-03-06 06:52:09

[martin14]

The author of this article is an idiot.

[Prof_Chomsky]

Well, it's safe to say someone is an idiot. Not necessarily the author...

I hope our children grow a pair to bring back some fairness and equity to the global economy.

[andyt]

I think it will be coming to a country near you real soon as govts try to continue to live beyond their means by giving the rich an easy ride. But then, if the best Americans can come up with, in response to the Wall Street bailouts being paid for by every taxpayer is to form the Teaparty, maybe not. They sure seem an indoctrinated lot, and we see the same mindset on this forum. Eager technoserfs.

But as for bringing back some fairness and equity to the global economy, that was never the case. Equity and fairness flourished briefly in the West post WWII, not in the rest of the world. And not in the relations between the West and the rest either. I fear our brief experiment with having a more egalitarian society is over, eagerly abandoned by all the Joe the Plumbers out there who earn a working man's wages but somehow sympathize and identify with the rich. Oh, well, if we really screw up the planet well be returning to hunter/gatherer societies, and those were certainly egalitarian. (Well not counting west coast natives - they were too rich to be egalitarian.)

[Thanos]

Robber barony has it's peaks and valleys, just like any other system does. Those who are first will someday once again be last, just like the Dylan song said. The only problem now in in the United States where the ones who are directly responsible for destroying the middle class have received a total pass for what they've done, while simultaneously managing to put almost the entirety of the blame on the perpetually poor who had almost nothing to do with causing the last thirty years of scorched-earth economic devastation.

The devil's greatest trick was to convince the world that he never existed? Yeah, well, he could learn a few new things from the modern American plutocracy who managed to make themselves 100% guilt-free for all the evil things they are 100% responsible for creating. Compared to them, Old Nick's nothing but an amateurish piker.

[andyt]

I don't think the Astors or Rockefellers ever came last Thanos. They were still doing pretty well during our brief egalitarian interregnum. The banditry was just turned down to a dull roar for a little while, before being turned back up to 11.

[Thanos]

You're probably right, except that the whole situation is worse when you have to consider that the old-school barons like Henry Ford and the Rockefellers will be seen by history to have a vastly greater degree of social responsibility than any of the current Masters Of The Universe will.

It's bloody depressing to think that 1945 to about 2000 will be seen as the economic and societal pinnacle of the West, especially in the United States, and that everything else that came afterwards was just the slow, nasty return to humanity's apparent naturally brutal state of unanswerable master and disposable servant. Fuck.......

[andyt]

Thanos Thanos:

You're probably right, except that the whole situation is worse when you have to consider that the old-school barons like Henry Ford and the Rockefellers will be seen by history to have a vastly greater degree of social responsibility than any of the current Masters Of The Universe will.

It's bloody depressing to think that 1945 to about 2000 will be seen as the economic and societal pinnacle of the West, especially in the United States, and that everything else that came afterwards was just the slow, nasty return to humanity's apparent naturally brutal state of unanswerable master and disposable servant. Fuck.......

You mean 1945 to 1968 don't you? That's the year Nixon was elected. Tho on Bill Maher recently, opinion was that Nixon would now be seen as a wild eyed liberal. So lets say 45 to 80. Cause this shit certainly started with Raygun.

[Bruce_the_vii]

I think that there have been protests in Canada and the United States dating back to the spring of 1984. At that time people changed the rule on private and confidential and began to leak details to their home neighbours of what they knew was going on. This was in reaction to the run away deficits and the emphasis was on individual culpability rather than the rich. It was done surreptitiously so only about 10% of the adult population actually heard anything. It was modern beer riots. It lasted to 1991. I have about three binders of notes on the event. If our country decays badly these riots emphasizing individual problems could come back.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Cause this shit certainly started with Raygun.

No, the rejection of liberal-socialist tax policies started with John F. Kennedy in reaction to the recession of 1957-1962. Kennedy lowered the top rates from 98% to 70% and the result was a 61% increase in Federal revenues from 1961 to 1963.

JFK JFK:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.

Conversely, Jimmy Carter imposed a luxury tax on all purchases over $30,000 and, in one fell swoop, he fired a torpedo into the Cadillac division of General Motors with the loss of 7,800 UAW jobs. This punitive tax on the wealthy killed a struggling US yacht industry that has never recovered as wealthy Americans still tend to buy their yachts in Europe and then place foreign flags on their stern posts.

The punitive estate taxes caused the end of more family farms than any corporate competitor ever did as land-rich and cash-poor families were forced to sell their farms in order to satisfy irrational tax levies.

All of this goes to the point that you don't make poor people any less poor by beggaring the wealthy, all you do is make more poor people.

[andyt]

Reducing tax from 98% to 70% seems entirely reasonable. (And yet somehow, the US became an industrial superpower with that 98% rate after WWII). Having a top tax rate of 50%, even better, as long as the loop holes are closed. But just as at some point taxes can be too high, they can also be too low. Clinton successfully raised taxes a bit, and the US never had it so good.

[martin14]

andyt andyt:

Reducing tax from 98% to 70% seems entirely reasonable. (And yet somehow, the US became an industrial superpower with that 98% rate after WWII).

Most of Europe and China/Japan in ruins may have had something to do with it.

$1:

Having a top tax rate of 50%, even better, as long as the loop holes are closed. But just as at some point taxes can be too high, they can also be too low. Clinton successfully raised taxes a bit, and the US never had it so good.

Globalization started, companies resetting businesses, cutting wage rates by 90%,
hundreds of millions of new customers in East Europe and China, lots more money.


Sometimes you give the politicians way too much credit for the economy.

[andyt]

Only when it goes against you're argument, eh?

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Only when it goes against you're argument, eh?

Actually, no.

Politicians are never responsible for private entrepreneurial efforts.

They either strangle them or get out of the way and allow them to happen. The latter effect is what you see taking place in China.

[Prof_Chomsky]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

No, the rejection of liberal-socialist tax policies started with John F. Kennedy in reaction to the recession of 1957-1962. Kennedy lowered the top rates from 98% to 70% and the result was a 61% increase in Federal revenues from 1961 to 1963.

So you pulled that crap out of the same place all your usual crap comes from I see. Once again proving that when a right wing nut job is disproved by the facts he just invents his own. FFS, stop guarding the rich. If you make 99% of the nations wealth, you pay 99% of it's taxes. THAT's fair.

Know what else is fair? Taking the government and our laws back from the super rich that have systematically chipped away at our laws. Corporations are not people, and should have no rights as such. No campaign finance rights, no right to lobby, and clearly no human rights like the right to privacy.

Top marginal rates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax ... es.5B26.5D

Tax revenue:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts ... ?Docid=203