Hating the rich over liking the poor

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti
for all those that think trickle-down doesn't work either weren't an adult in the 80's or just weren't paying attention. Our economy was a complete mess and it was Reagan that pulled us out of it. Bush 1 and Clinton both inherited a fixed economy. The 90's were the best economic years in my lifetime. That didn't just happen by itself. Trump is our modern Reagan.

Regan also increased government spending and ran a large deficit to stimulate the economy.

The Regan economy may have been good for many people but necessarily because of 'trickle down ' economics.

a reply to: olaru12

What astonishes me is that the Right wingers hate taxes for social programs but are more than happy to support any and all war machines of the Military industrial complex, paying for $600 toilet seats, do nothing generals making 1mil a year with life long pensions, and our tax dollars going to rebuild countries that we destroyed. Obscene profits for corps like Halliburton and the private military while ignoring the enlisted man. Here's how it breaks down....

What astonishes me is that LEFT wingers spend MORE $$ on their WELFARE Industrial Complex, and the ONLY thing that pays for it is the middle class INCOME TAX PAYERS that pay for all their FREE SNIP.

The majority of defense spending pays for entitlement programs.

Because WE ALL know the people using those programs aren't paying for SNIP.

a reply to: Grambler
You guys and your low hanging fruit fetish. You could just have easily written a thread that claimed rich people are lying about their motivations, but ya didn't. It's always one sided.

I'm middle class and don't really have the money for it but I still donate to charity. I believe in helping the poor. I like my tax dollars helping them. But here's more screaming about how it must just be envy and jealousy. I'd rather live in a cabin than a mansion, I don't want your damn money, I just don't want anyone living on the goddamn street. I don't want people with filthy drinking water. I don't want parents working three jobs to the neglect of their children. Is that so hard to grasp?

Meanwhile the rich, not having those problems, are the victims. The US is so backwards.

a reply to: Edumakated

In a town in Idaho with a population of 20k? Hahaha. If it were not for wash state next door, this town would die like the others. That’s why they voted for trump. His promises to rural counties about jobs. All the rich people live in resorts about 2 weeks in summer then gone.

a reply to: ScepticScot

Reagan didn’t care about deficits. Deficits are savings for taxpayers. Have our cake and eat it too.

originally posted by: olaru12
What astonishes me is that the Right wingers hate taxes for social programs but are more than happy to support any and all war machines of the Military industrial complex, paying for $600 toilet seats, do nothing generals making 1mil a year with life long pensions, and our tax dollars going to rebuild countries that we destroyed. Obscene profits for corps like Halliburton and the private military while ignoring the enlisted man. Here's how it breaks down....





You know what the capital H is for.....

Entitlements......just a reminder, I payed into the system my entire working life. Touch SS or medicare and you have dembs all over again.

I don't think you will find many conservative ATS posters who don't have an issue with out of control military spending. However, we also note that military spending is what our federal government is supposed to be doing constitutionally. No where in our constitution does it say anything about the majority of all the other BS our government pisses money away on - education, welfare programs, healthcare, etc.

Again, this is not to say we can't spend money on these at the state level, but the feds have no business doing so. Our states have abdicated their responsibilities to the feds which is what is leading to bloat and inefficiency.

a reply to: Grambler

You're sort of stating the obvious, here, Grambler. I have known for years that the true agenda was anti-rich, not pro-poor.

The simple fact is that there is only one way to help the poor: allow them opportunity. Notice I didn't say give them opportunity; I said allow them opportunity. Government never has, does not, cannot give opportunity. Government can only control opportunity.

It is a good thing when government steps in to make working conditions safer... up to a point. Since you mentioned miners, a mine that uses substandard supports is putting their miners' lives at risk unnecessarily. So it is a good thing when inspectors come in to inspect the supports and make sure they are as safe as practical. However, a mine by nature is not a safe place. It becomes unreasonable when the mine must be supported like a luxury hotel. Both restrictions raise the cost of operations and make the products from the mine more expensive, but the former raises the cost a little while not making it extremely difficult for the mine to make a profit, while the latter makes it almost impossible for a mine to make a profit and causes miners to be laid off as the mines close. No regulation can be bad for workers, some regulation can be good for workers, but too much regulation is always bad for workers and the companies that hire them.

The urban inner-city is a perfect example of too much government interference. Inner cities always start off as prospering economic areas with the normal distribution of companies, middle-class, and poor. What typically happens is that the companies move off for a myriad of reasons. Perhaps the taxes are lower elsewhere, or they need to expand and there's no land available to do so, or maybe crime increases to the point it is affecting their ability to make a profit, but there is always a reason. As the businesses close, the workers are forced to either leave, commute, or become poor. Commutes are trying and expensive, so more and more of those who can, move off. The labor market shrinks and the percentage of the poor increase. The poor often resort to crime as a way to survive, especially when they are not only poor but also see little hope for the future. The few businesses that are left have problems recruiting workers, because the worker class has mostly moved away and workers from other areas do not want to drive into a crime-riddled area. So they slowly fade away and move off, leaving precious little business and precious few opportunities for those who are forced by economic status to remain. Soon, gangs move in and the entire area is stuck in the quagmire of crime and poverty.

To a reasonable person, the correct method to correct this problem is to encourage business to remain in the area, perhaps by tax breaks or infrastructure renovation. But to the liberal, the correct solution is to give the poor that are left there enough money to barely scrape by in despair, and to try and force whatever businesses that may remain to spend more on workers, effectively running them out of business as well.

The next time anyone reading this is driving through a town, look around. If the area is prosperous, there are few dilapidated buildings with signs to rent or sell. In depressed areas with high crime, those are on every corner. That's not homes that have been abandoned; that's companies. Homes, especially housing developments and low-rent apartments, continue on thanks to government payments.

If the people were to move out, the entire area could be purchased by a developer and rebuilt from scratch... but that cannot happen until the crime issue that was originally caused by economic and/or regulatory issues is resolved. And the people cannot move out, because they don't have enough to move. If they did, they would likely have moved long ago. They only have what they need to hold body and soul together, and any thought of improving their lot in life is met with the threat of losing what precious little they get in that government check.

That is not compassion. It is enslavement.

The common argument used to excuse this agenda is that the rich take too much and leave too little for others. And that may be true! EVERYONE wants more out of life, rich, poor, and anywhere in between. The difference between the rich and the poor is only that the rich have either gotten more opportunity, or they have taken more chances on opportunities. No poor person has ever created a job while they were poor; most rich people have created jobs while they were rich. A job is an opportunity, and therefore rich people tend to allow others the opportunity to become richer.

Now, even if that argument is accepted, the liberal will likely say, "So you think we should reward the rich?" No. I do not. Neither do we need to reward the poor, or the middle class. Government should not be in the rewards business, because the very idea of rewarding someone is inherently unfair. But neither should the government be in the business of punishing people based on success; that is also inherently unfair. Government should be in the business of protecting both the worker and the company alike, equally, so the economy can thrive and all can have access to opportunity. The family living in a run-down apartment eating off food stamps while looking for jobs that do not exist might have the bare essentials of life, but at the cost of their opportunity. How can someone like that have decent clothing to wear to an interview, a chance at education to improve their opportunities, or even be able to network with those living in even slightly more favorable conditions? They can't... and they have little opportunity.

The reasonable person does not want anyone to suffer needlessly, but recognizes that if we try to provide everyone with everything simply because they exist, no one will have anything. Life just doesn't work that way. We need to give people opportunity by letting the rich offer the opportunity to Americans and still profit. We need to stop taking taxes from those trying to take advantage of opportunity, and give them the freedom to use their meager incomes in the way that seems best to them. We need to grow our economy so we have the means to better help the ones left behind by expanding social programs to allow more help for those willing (or physically unable) to try and less help for those unwilling.

That's what this tax plan does, from what I have read.

Winning... it does a country good.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: MOMof3
a reply to: Edumakated

In a town in Idaho with a population of 20k? Hahaha. If it were not for wash state next door, this town would die like the others. That’s why they voted for trump. His promises to rural counties about jobs. All the rich people live in resorts about 2 weeks in summer then gone.

So benefits to the towns don't trickle down from those resorts?

A Russian economist once said "In a healthy society, wealth is admired. In a sick society, wealth is despised."

Whenever the subject of wealth inequality arises, I immediately think of Obama.
Obama REALLY took the evil rich meme to new heights. Hear he is scolding the evil, greedy capitalists:



Now he's worth around $40 million.




BTW, your OP is very relevant with the Orwell discussion.

a reply to: Edumakated

The “resorts” are cabins they own and fly into for 2 weeks. This isn’t like the east. These are just a had full of anglers and hunters. The town people don’t even see them because their property is inaccessibile. People work in the blue state of wa because it doesn’t have income tax. The red state of Idaho does with high property taxes compared to wages and bad roads.

a reply to: Ridhya

I'm middle class and don't really have the money for it but I still donate to charity. I believe in helping the poor. I like my tax dollars helping them.

I applaud your compassion, but not your logic.

You wish you had more money to give to charity, but you don't want the government to stop taking as much of your money. Your tax dollars do not and never will go to a true charity to help the poor. They go to a social program designed to keep the poor in poverty. You cannot change that and neither can I. But we can all choose where our charity goes. It has always confused me why someone who wants to help the poor is against letting people help the poor.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Grambler

The issue is NOT "hatred of the rich" or "despising the poor" but it IS "class warfare" - of the RICH against EVERYONE ELSE.

That is the concern over "income inequality" and the vast amounts raked in by a tiny minority ty that seems insatiable to the point of destructive madness.

Income Inequality Study - Harvard

Lawrence Katz, the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), says the most damaging aspects of the gap between the top 1 percent of Americans and everyone else involve the increasing economic and political power that the very rich wield over society, along with a growing educational divide, and escalating social segregation in which the elites live in literal and figurative gated communities.

If the rate of economic mobility — the ability of people to improve their economic station — was higher, he says, our growing income disparity might not be such a problem. “But what we have been seeing is rising inequality with stagnant mobility, which means that the consequences of where you start out, whether it’s in a poor neighborhood, whether it’s from a single-parent household, are more consequential today than in the past. Your ZIP code and the exact characteristics of your parents seem to matter more,” said Katz. “And that’s quite disturbing.”

And this:

The U.S. government does “considerably less” than comparable democracies to even out disposable family incomes, Jencks says. And current state and local tax policies “actually increase income inequality.”

“All the costs and risks of capitalism seem to have been shifted largely to those who work rather than those who invest,” he said. Compounding the economic imbalance is the unlikely prospect that those at the bottom can ever improve their lot.

“We have some of the lowest rates of upward mobility of any developed country in the world,” said Nathaniel Hendren, an associate professor of economics at FAS who has studied intergenerational mobility and how inequality transmits across generations.

So this really isn't hatred towards out of touch "let them eat cake" rich people, though there is frustration at the sheer cluelessness of some such individuals, but instead the educated realization that the more money that gets sucked up to the top 1% and beyond that, the ultra rich, the less our government and its policies are "for the people" and the more they are to benefit rich people, giving them a status that "trumps" the welfare of the nation and its future.

One might note that such vast income inequality seems to always, historically, proceed a major economic crash, which the wealthy can survive, but the middle class is left to clean up and suffer from. I'm not optimistic about the outcome of the current tax legislation.

a reply to: MOMof3

So, let me make sure I understand this post...

Idaho, with high income tax rates, is struggling economically. Washington with no income taxes is prospering to the point that their residents are buying vacation property in Idaho. It sounds to me like you are saying that high income taxes depress the economy...

TheRedneck

originally posted by: MOMof3
a reply to: Edumakated

The “resorts” are cabins they own and fly into for 2 weeks. This isn’t like the east. These are just a had full of anglers and hunters. The town people don’t even see them because their property is inaccessibile. People work in the blue state of wa because it doesn’t have income tax. The red state of Idaho does with high property taxes compared to wages and bad roads.

Whether they use the cabins, two weeks or all summer is irrelevant. The point is that those rich people flying in to use cabins generates economic activity for ancillary businesses. This happens all over the country where people spend money.

You can pick any place you want and I can show you how trickle down works.

Heck, let's pick Hollywood. So what if some actor is making $20 million a film. All the ancillary jobs that result from this one actor making $20 million is worth it. Think about all the people who have jobs on the set of a movie, most of which make no where near $20 million. Think of all the other business... toy makers. movie theaters. advertising companies.
the restaurants near theaters. You can go on and on.

Individuals are far more efficient at spending their money than the government. When people have more of their money, they are also far more generous with charity. Instead of me giving $1000 to government and maybe $5 dollars benefitting a charity, I'd rather just take my $1000 and give it to the charity directly.

a reply to: Grambler

But... but... but... think about the kids!

Graduate psychology student Felix Warneken not only tests toddlers' altruism, he also tests their patience. To determine their willingness to help him out, he has devised experiments in which he drops an object on the floor as many as 15 times and then watches as the toddlers hand it to him again and again.
The old idea was that we're born purely selfish and become helpful, prosocial beings through moral education and other socialization processes, says Warneken, a doctoral student in the department of developmental and comparative psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "It rather seems to be the case," he explains, "that selfish and altruistic motives are there from the beginning in competition with each other, but we can build upon those altruistic, prosocial tendencies."
Warneken is part of a cadre of researchers studying altruism in children. They're examining inborn altruism and exploring external forces, such as parental role modeling, that have an impact on children's altruistic behavior. They're also studying explicit efforts to foster altruism in children, such as classrooms that emphasize cooperation rather than competition and school programs that require students to give back to their communities..

www.apa.org...

originally posted by: AboveBoard
a reply to: Grambler

The issue is NOT "hatred of the rich" or "despising the poor" but it IS "class warfare" - of the RICH against EVERYONE ELSE.

That is the concern over "income inequality" and the vast amounts raked in by a tiny majority that seems insatiable to the point of destructive madness.

Income Inequality Study - Harvard

Lawrence Katz, the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), says the most damaging aspects of the gap between the top 1 percent of Americans and everyone else involve the increasing economic and political power that the very rich wield over society, along with a growing educational divide, and escalating social segregation in which the elites live in literal and figurative gated communities.

If the rate of economic mobility — the ability of people to improve their economic station — was higher, he says, our growing income disparity might not be such a problem. “But what we have been seeing is rising inequality with stagnant mobility, which means that the consequences of where you start out, whether it’s in a poor neighborhood, whether it’s from a single-parent household, are more consequential today than in the past. Your ZIP code and the exact characteristics of your parents seem to matter more,” said Katz. “And that’s quite disturbing.”

And this:

The U.S. government does “considerably less” than comparable democracies to even out disposable family incomes, Jencks says. And current state and local tax policies “actually increase income inequality.”

“All the costs and risks of capitalism seem to have been shifted largely to those who work rather than those who invest,” he said. Compounding the economic imbalance is the unlikely prospect that those at the bottom can ever improve their lot.

“We have some of the lowest rates of upward mobility of any developed country in the world,” said Nathaniel Hendren, an associate professor of economics at FAS who has studied intergenerational mobility and how inequality transmits across generations.

So this really isn't hatred towards out of touch "let them eat cake" rich people, though there is frustration at the sheer cluelessness of some such individuals, but instead the educated realization that the more money that gets sucked up to the top 1% and beyond that, the ultra rich, the less our government and its policies are "for the people" and the more they are to benefit rich people, giving them a status that "trumps" the welfare of the nation and its future.

One might note that such vast income inequality seems to always, historically, proceed a major economic crash, which the wealthy can survive, but the middle class is left to clean up and suffer from. I'm not optimistic about the outcome of the current tax legislation.

When has there ever been a time that we didn't have income inequality? Further, what does income equality look like? Be specific.

a reply to: Edumakated

When has there ever been a time that we didn't have income inequality? Further, what does income equality look like? Be specific.

There's always been a difference between skilled and unskilled labor.

Kinda the entire point of college degrees and unions.

WORK has never been an equal thing by extension neither should taxation.

a reply to: Edumakated

That sounds like people working together for mutual benefits, like socialism.

How is an actor going to make 20 million if there are no customers with money?

a reply to: Edumakated

Specific. Ok.

The wealthiest 1 percent of American households own 40 percent of the country's wealth, according to a new paper by economist Edward N. Wolff.

That share is higher than it has been at any point since at least 1962, according to Wolff's data, which comes from the federal Survey of Consumer Finances.

From 2013, the share of wealth owned by the 1 percent shot up by nearly three percentage points.

Wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent, meanwhile, fell over the same period.

Today, the top 1 percent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. That gap, between the ultrawealthy and everyone else, has only become wider in the past several decades.

This article has great graphs that explain it in full, very specifically.

Enjoy.

Link

a reply to: TheRedneck

If income tax is bad, why haven’t the republicans for 30 yrs gotten rid of it in Idaho? That’s what is ironic. Wa is a blue state and the democrats have not started a state income tax.

Wa state is booming because of pot.