Investing in the Middle Class

you can give a man a fish, and you've fed them for a day...
but teach the man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime!!!

investing in the middle class, and everyone else.
give the younger generations the tools and training needed to achieve in the 21 st century, without ending up in so much debt.
spend more time worrying about small businesses and less time worrying about cleaning up after the too big to fails. help those small businesses with new ideas, new products, new ways of doing things develop them to market. because, the next leader of the world will be the one who comes up with the new energy alternative and makes it work, the new whatever, because the world is saturated with the old and there's no way those markets can expand short of finding our mythical aliens out in space to sell our crap to.
shore up social security and ensure that these younger generations aren't left holding the bag when it comes to taking care of them when their parents can no longer care for themselves. they need to be starting their own families, not wasting their resources on their parents elder care.
and... there's is no reason (at least sane reason) why someone who is earning over a million dollars can walk away not paying any income tax (like trump did) while the middle class family has struggled to feed their family all year and can contribute some! obviously the rich don't need more tax breaks, neither do the big corps.

at least that would be my idea of investing in the almost non-existent middle class. but I am sure that it doesn't mean the same thing to the politicians promoting the idea.

a reply to: dawnstar

there's is no reason (at least sane reason) why someone who is earning over a million dollars can walk away not paying any income tax (like trump did) while the middle class family has struggled to feed their family all year and can contribute some! obviously the rich don't need more tax breaks, neither do the big corps.

Flat tax. No exemption no exceptions.

a reply to: seasonal

so... you want to start charging a 25% tax on the poor who are barely getting by, or are depending on food stamps to feed their family to begin with? okay, so how long do you think it will take for the gov't to adjust those benefits so that they can still eat? and also to adjust to the fact that more people need the help if they are to eat?
tax the poor, and well, you end up just having to pay an army of social workers to give it back to them.

a reply to: dawnstar

If the poor are working they should pay taxes, I feel the same way about the super rich. If we start to make exceptions, we end up right back to where we are now, we must be adults making adult policies. If Russia can make ends meet on 13% so should the US.

It isn't perfect, but it will be fair, understandable, and easy to figure out what you owe without an accountant who really doesn't understand the tax laws either. The poor who are not working will be paying no taxes anyway.

in theory this would encourage job growth, and that would mean wages rising unless the large corps distort (some would say continue) the job market with illegal immigrants/under the table/H-1b methods.

Can you imagine the checks that would be written?

Oh corps are people, so you pay up as well.

a reply to: dawnstar

I didn't say 25%. Russia, yes Russia has a 13% flat tax, we should start around this #.

originally posted by: Teikiatsu
Just curious about people's opinion on this talking point.

What does "Investing in the Middle Class" mean to you?

After you answer that, here's my follow up: Instead of 'investing' in the middle class... why not just cut out the middle-man, lower taxes, and let the middle class keep more of their own money to spend as they see fit? In the end, what is the difference?

It doesn't mean anything to me. It sounds good, but it's ultimately a meaningless statement. With wealth inequality being what it is, the so called middle class doesn't have enough assets to invest in.

I suppose if you really wanted to get down to it, we could call expanding the middle class investing in them.
If we wanted to do that, it would involve letting people get educated without taking on an entire homes worth of student loan debt.
Fixing the systemic issues that are leading to wage stagnation, so that people can accumulate some wealthy.
Reducing the risk to starting businesses so that people can become entrepreneurs.
And creating a system where people with bad luck who get sick don't lose their life savings and all future earnings potential.

All of which involves.... higher taxes.

originally posted by: Teikiatsu
Why are they working so hard? Why are things so expensive?

Wage stagnation, the result of how CPI is calculated which doesn't properly reflect inflation. This is something that will require 50 years worth of small economic adjustments to fix.

The expense argument could most easily be summed up by capitalism. We're currently operating on a model of disposable goods. When something breaks we throw it out and buy another. After we've had it for a year or two we trade it in for a better model. It's all about spending, spending, and more spending. Capitalism is efficient enough at producing goods, that if we produced high quality items, in 20 or 30 years our families, and our descendants could have all the tools they need. The problem with that is it means there's no more jobs to go around, incomes dry up, and people have nothing to do.

Instead we use a system that's as wasteful as humanly possible so that there's always a money sink to buy things. That's why life is expensive.

originally posted by: dawnstar
you can give a man a fish, and you've fed them for a day...
but teach the man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime!!!

If you give a man a fish, he can eat while developing worthwhile job skills.
If you teach and then expect a man to fish, he might eat but he's never going to accomplish anything other than a subsistence existence.

I walk away for a few days...

So we see what some people think 'investing' is.

Remember the second question: Why should anyone 'invest' (ie subsidize) when they could just lower taxes and let people keep more of their money?

originally posted by: Teikiatsu
I walk away for a few days...

So we see what some people think 'investing' is.

Remember the second question: Why should anyone 'invest' (ie subsidize) when they could just lower taxes and let people keep more of their money?

Because taxes don't take your money away. Tax money doesn't simply vanish, it gets spent through government contracts. The profits from those contracts then get spent in your business. In the end things get done, and no one is out any money.

If I remember correctly, you're a research scientist right? You may work for a private corporation, but it's a government contract that likely funds a part of your research. If you kept more money, you would also be out of a job.

When the entire economy is ran on a debt based agenda, then the concept of a 'middle class' disappears with it. In current times, there are the have's, the have not's, and the know not's. Its my belief that the know not's were once labeled the 'middle class' and that in 30 years forward the know not's will depend on daily checks from their government to live off of.

So, why invest in something that does not exist? How about we settle and invest in this mythical group as soon as we defeat this horrible enemy America has been at war with for decades... this horrible enemy called drugs. Oops... gotta go... doctor calling back to answer if this thing I seen on TV is right for me... I will check back later...