One person should only be so rich.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus

Originally posted by Kojack
what is with this popular support in socialism i'm seeing?

its not even communism as many here are calling it, its just simply socialism. put bush back in power also on top of all that....

POTUS Obama made it all popular and cool you know. I've seen an upsurge just in the time he's been President. Bunch of fools have no clue how disastrous it is.

Wow, who knows what the elites really got planned....

Destruction of private ownership? Push for all things publicly and government owned? oh god, we need to kick that silver tongue out the White House....

Originally posted by IAMIAM

Originally posted by SplitInfinity
Wish I could explain. Split Infinity

You never have to explain yourself to me my friend.

You are what you are, and I am no better than anyone.

If you need help, I will gladly give it.

Have a blessed Holy day.

Everyday.

With Love,

Your Brother

I appreciate that...I really do. I have been around for awhile. I have been part of a group conciousness and knew what it was and is to be loved. I am a Musician who plays...although I am older now...in a band that was big in the 80's. I have toured with Aerosmith, Heart, Robin Trower, Motley Crew, Stained....etc..

I still play and I am in studio now. But I have another job....that grates on me. It is an important job and must be done but if I were to tell some...they would not understand....because they do not have enough information to judge.

Still....although I have lived a life that has experiences that could rival several others lifetimes....I find myself dealing with myself. Split Infinity....the Universe divide as the heart andmind collided with the spirit left unguided!

Still...if I had the same proposal offered....I would do it again...even knowing what I know now. People need to start thinking for themselves. Although I am wealthy....I have never taken this for granted and try to help as much as I can. The others that I work with...not band....are not so wealthy....yet they sacrifice so much...as others sitting on their thrones laugh and make more money.

I wish my directed ability to balance thing could be allowed to be used on this topic. Their is a major imballence in the United States....and it must be fixed....for everyones sake because what happens here...determines how the reast of the world goes. Split Infinity

reply to post by dcmb1409


I would love to only give $20 for every $100 I make.. but as an independent contractor, I pay a lot more. Maybe if I had 3 kids and worked at Walmart, I could pay nothing at tax time.. just like everyone else in my tax bracket. It's the government that screws us, not the corporations. Everyone should pay the same percentage of their income in taxes and there should never be a cap on how much you make.

You cannot steal a free man's wealth, you cannot impose your will on him. UNLESS he voluntarily allows it.

Originally posted by eight19
reply to post by dcmb1409

 

I would love to only give $20 for every $100 I make.. but as an independent contractor, I pay a lot more. Maybe if I had 3 kids and worked at Walmart, I could pay nothing at tax time.. just like everyone else in my tax bracket. It's the government that screws us, not the corporations. Everyone should pay the same percentage of their income in taxes and there should never be a cap on how much you make.

Actually....it is lobbyists who get massive quantities of money into politicians campaign war chest....they get to keep whatever amount is left in their campaign fund war chest when they retire...NO S#!%!

They payoff the politicians of BOTH PARTIES....then money flows to either this company or that union and if you are an employee of a state or the Federal government....HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!

Let me use an example which I KNOW many people will immediatly jump on me for....TEACHERS and the EDUCATION SYSTEM. Teachers work ony 180 days a year...THATS IT! And because of how their union contracts are structured....after they get a little tenure...no matter how bad they perform their job...they cannot be fired! Neither can a good up and coming teacher..who is doing their job...ie...actually TEACHING....cannot get a raise or bonus for their good work. They have to put their time in first.

So we endlessly pump money into a failed system with the politicians rallying cry...THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

I used to teach troubled inner city youths how to camp...cook...swim...forestry....survival...etc. It does not matter if a school building does not have this or that....I can teach a kid outside or in a tent with some knowledge, skill and a book. The secret is to get them interested and wanting to learn. There are no bad kids...just bad parents and teachers and politicians.

I had a kid...tough...half black...half Puerto Rican...tough...everyone wrote him of as a lost cause...called him a violent bad kid....in juvey 30 times plus...15 years old. Threatened to cut my throat with my own survival knife I was demonstrating. But he was SMART. But angry...the only way to get through a kid like that is to show him that he doesn't know everything and he isn't as tough as he thinks. 4 weeks later....he learned to swim and was sailing a small sailfish board boat across a mountain lake smiling. Split Infinity

Most of the known worlds money system is corrupted by those who purposefully manipulate its value therefor making your argument moot before we can begin. How can we set a limit when currency's values can change by a factor of one hundred or more in just a few years?

Besides, implementation of your idea would be nearly impossible and only result in more hidden power as one could easily divide his assets among family known or unknown.

Sure guys like Bill Gates individually probably made more money than they deserve through exploitation of our system, but at least he has decided to use it to make the world better in some way by giving. Governments are not very efficient at giving.

Besides if the Bill Gates cannot exist than there is no incentive to take such risks and make such achievements.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus

Originally posted by Kojack
what is with this popular support in socialism i'm seeing?

its not even communism as many here are calling it, its just simply socialism. put bush back in power also on top of all that....

POTUS Obama made it all popular and cool you know. I've seen an upsurge just in the time he's been President. Bunch of fools have no clue how disastrous it is.

I've noticed it seems to spring out of college campuses the most. You have alot of ex hippie professors indoctrinating their students with it as being the way to solve everything and it spread from there..And i would call it largely communism. I think many just say "oh no no its socialism!!" but once you hear them expand on their ideas it becomes clear and the most startling thing about this is how despite all the historical evidence we have of it being disastrous people still remain ignorant on the matter even though the information is so easily available !

And I am not just talking about textbooks or something you find on the history channel either. We have a vast amount of immigrants who live in our country who have fled from communist homelands and in many cases risked THEIR LIVES to escape here. The utterly revolting stories these people have told about life in this environment is proof enough.

As stated before in this thread capitalism is not the problem but a certain person or persons in the position of influence just has to point fingers and the witch hunt begins. I believe they could have blamed quizno's for the current economic situation and you would have thousands of sheep camping out in front of the stores with signs.

Ironically the biggest proponents of this today are people who have live in capitalist countries and take advantage of the numerous rights and luxuries that communist countries wont grant their citizens. One wouldn't even be able to sit here now and theorize in public over a different social and economic ideology if we lived under a communist regime.

Also as someone else noted previously it looks okay on paper but it fails miserably in reality because someones greed ends up screwing it all up as what was supposed to be equality turns into a dictatorship inevitably.

I would say Obama plays a part in it as well. With the phasing out of the middle class, empty promises that weren't fulfilled, and rights being stripped away from Americans while he grants more rights to his position of power we are now witnessing the precise line of events that occurred with every other country that had a communist take over.

HOPEFULLY this country does not have to see a war of any sort as a result of this. It's bad enough Americans have splintered off into so many different political and social groups that result in nothing more than finger pointing. The last thing we need is a clash over something that should have been long dead and buried.

Originally posted by Chadwickus
reply to post by s12345

 

Hmm let's put your theory into another perspective, a hypothetical if you will...

You are an Olympic runner and are in the top 1%, you got to that 1% by training non stop every day since you can remember, you've sacrificed a lot to get where you are, to be the best you can be.

Now, someone decides that things need to be "fairer" for everyone, so a cap is put in place and you are not allowed to run faster than this cap.

You've sacrificed many things and spent a lifetime to be the best and now you're being told you can't go out there and be the best you can be because it's not "fair"

Does that sound right?

Would it be right to tell Usain Bolt that he can't go out and run under 10 seconds?

This is exactly what you are proposing by capping peoples wealth.

So you compare sports with poverty, hunger and disease? so for you, putting people out of work is a game?
Because you know, making money is an evil competition, the more money you make, the more collateral damage there is.
Earth holds a limited amount of resources and wealth therefore -- money, do you really want no limit as to one can get, this will lead to a few owning the entire world.

reply to post by TheOracle


Way to miss the point entirely.

reply to post by TheOracle


Your statement saying....the Earth holds only a limited amount of resourses is flawed and actually untrue. It is just that we have either had the tech. held back by obvious reasons or some tech. has yet to come to fruition.

We have unlimited supplies of energy and if anyone could actually figure out the Unified Field Theory....we would never want again. Some of these things may be far off....some are not. I am fairly sure we have an opperational low temp. Fusion Generation system.

Split Infinity

reply to post by ArrowsNV

You already stand in line for Toilet Paper, and everything else for that matter.

Sure but the lines are reasonably short even at Wal Mart. We can stand in line with our bread, our meat, our milk and our tp and do it all in one shot. In communist Russia, you had to stand in a line that went around the corner for your loaf of bread, then you had to go in another one like it for your meat. Would you really be happy with that? Would you impose that on the rest of us for your pleasure? If you would, there's always Cuba. In fact they had a shortage of tp a couple years ago, so standing in a line wouldn't have even gotten you a roll. That is what govt run stuff does. It creates shortages of supply because a govt simply cannot anticpate the actual need of many many products.
If you love how the DMV works by all means expect everything else to be run that way too. Happy faces serving you out of love (not). In fact there was a cartoon came out when Obamacare was being pushed on us.....showed health clinics and DMV being run together in the same outfit. Well that is really what it will be when the govt runs everything.

reply to post by paganini


Yes exactly because even Karl Marx and Lenin admit that socialism is but a bridge to communism. In essence, socialism is communism light and uses Capital to advance their agenda(this is what Soros is doing and somehow he is never called out by those who hate Capitalism)

Originally posted by Kojack

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus

Originally posted by Kojack
what is with this popular support in socialism i'm seeing?

its not even communism as many here are calling it, its just simply socialism. put bush back in power also on top of all that....

POTUS Obama made it all popular and cool you know. I've seen an upsurge just in the time he's been President. Bunch of fools have no clue how disastrous it is.

Wow, who knows what the elites really got planned....

Destruction of private ownership? Push for all things publicly and government owned? oh god, we need to kick that silver tongue out the White House....

It is historical fact that even in communist countries, the leaders are the wealthy elite. Lenin himself said that even in a system where the proletariat are supposed to own the means of production during the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leaders themselves, those at the top become the new bourgeois proletariat. Fun huh. This is why Nancy Pelosi can be extremely wealthy while pushing socialized medicine on an unwilling public.

What is needed is balance in a sense that...a person should be able to achieve greatness and wealth....but have the Big Picture in mind. Communism doesn't work. Never has. A person who works harder than another is rewarded by their effort. A person who takes for granted a benifit given by the totality of others...is a drain on the system...plus....Communists were really not REAL Communists. Do you think that members high in the party were living in shacks working farms while everyone else toiled working fields along side their leaders?

Hell NO! The Leaders used the system to make money.

It is the independent drive of a persons dreams and ideas that creates innovation and jobs. All we need to do in the U.S. is make a few laws and enforce them....to hold white collor criminals acountable.

I am relatively wealthy and because I have good people around me....I pay less taxes than I think I should. It is all legal and by the book but there are loopholes written it by lawyers and lawmakers and this comes from BOTH parties.

I try to give back as much as I can....but others of wealth....and I know these people and see how they view the less fortunate....will do whatever it takes to keep themselves on top.
Split Infinity

Originally posted by Unrealised
To me, Communism is the way of the future.
The biggest secret of economics is that Communism is a very powerful system.

The problem with Communism is that their is no incentive to work hard.

Misallocation of resources is also a big problem due to the central planning.

Apparently, the notion of everyone sharing stops working when a group grows larger than a couple of hundred people. Below a couple of hundred people, the group can 'force' people to put in a fair effort through imposition of group disapproval.

Beyond a couple of hundred people, lots people become more anonymous and the 'free-rider' problem occurs.

On the other hand, it is also true that the very rich often pay no tax at all, while the very poor often pay most of their income in tax.

Originally posted by Adamanteus
Not really sure how this is supposed to work.

I start company and after 10 years have saved 100 million lbs. so what am I to do with my company now? I am certainly not going to keep running it for FREE and I cannot sell it because I would be going over the 100 million lbs I am allowed to own.

Please tell me that this is a theoretical question and not reality?
You are using 'lbs' which means pounds as in weight. Is it a very heavy company?
Or did you mean £s?
Back to the OP, I do agree that the difference between the richest and poorest is obscene. think it would be great if it could work. But 100 million £s is setting the bar too high. Being allowed to have that amount means you can be as rich as the top minority. Not much of a limit!
In fact there is already a form of control in higher taxes. Ironically though it's those in the supertax category who can afford clever accountants to minimise tax and many end up paying a lesser percentage than you and I.

Originally posted by s12345
I think it would be best if done over the whole world: the wealth limit. Also I see it as capitalism with a ceiling. Business would go on except that at a certain point it would be best to spend the money, give it away, because of the ceiling. This would help spread wealth around, create more and better paid jobs. I think it would soon become clear that most of the worlds problems would disappear. It would also squash the prices of things down: in a world when no one can have more than 100 million, paintings by old masters, yachts would decline in price and with them everything else. I heard somewhere that differences between the best paid and the worst cause a lot of illness, a ceiling on wealth would make people healthier. We already found out with the banking collapse that putting large amounts of wealth in a few places causes great economic instability. Also once people get to a certain point then keeping wealth would be a higher priority: this may have prevented the banking collapse.

Your post is a good one and maybe one of the most important that has ever been posted here at ATS.
When you mention the "whole world". You hit the nail on the head. Because these ceo's sport stars, world leaders, hollywood actors and the list goes on. They couldn't go any were else to get their big bucks. They would have a ceiling cap. So if one company, team, production company etc. doesn't give them what they want they would be trapped (ye-ha) and couldn't get more (yippee). I won't say greedy hands because it would be the natural human tendency for any person, corporation, team owner etc. to do this but it would be wiped out by the vote of the (people) to all get together to wipe it out. The system that we have today is SO lopsided, it is like comparing the tallest skyscraper with a tiny needle. That is how much difference there is between the 99% and the 1%.

Sure you need a reward system for being the best at what ever it is but there should be an allotment given out to the great sports hero, the genius scientist, the incredible team and unbelievable actor or actress, the great musician etc. If this system would protected by the vote of the people and not dictator it would be a great way to go. But it has to pass through a clean democratic system. And if it is not the vote of all the people then NO GO!

But again, it would have to be a world system were lets say the genius ceo of Bank of America couldn't go to Russia for bigger bucks. Or the family money that was gathered through generations would be frozen and shaken down so it wouldn't be spread to just a particular family.

If just one person has wealth and superior living over others it would be a disaster. It has to be all or nothing.
If a person is slothful and just plain doesn't have anything to offer humanity that would have to be considered with training in a skill that he would be interested in. But there has to be a wealth system that helps the underprivileged.

So important to have a wealth system that would reward the innovators but not so lopsided as a pin to a skyscraper they way it is now .

Such an important post s12345 !

Originally posted by ollncasino
The problem with Communism is that their is no incentive to work hard.

Wrong monetary incentive only works for simple automated tasks which are going to be all automated sooner or later.
For jobs requiring even rudimentary cognitive skills money do more harm then good.

Originally posted by ollncasino
Misallocation of resources is also a big problem due to the central planning.

Misallocation of resources you have right now
Using up oil the most energy efficient material there is driving billions of cars around you call that good allocation ????
Communism deosnt have to be central planned.
With current tech you can gather information about demand much faster and more accurate then free market does it via price mechanism

Beside some kind of planning is essential in any economy. Try running a store with no planning. Try running any company with no planning.

reply to post by thetiler


Important post...yes. But does this workin reality....no. Individual acomplishment is not the problem. It is the laws or lack of that allow people to get away with virtually stealing peoples investments without proper protections of improper buisness dealings.

It is the laws of the system not the system that is causing disaster. Split Infinity

reply to post by Chadwickus


Your example really was comparing Apples and Oranges. Being excessively wealthy and asked to share some of your wealth once it hits a certain amount is not comparable to asking an athlete to tone down their running to accommodate slower runners so there is a more even playing field.