It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
This has to happen if America is to remain strong and true to its ideals. It’s a practical necessity and a moral imperative. Last year during the Occupy movement, the conservatives who oppose tax equality saw the first real ripples of discontent. Their response was either Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”) or Ebenezer Scrooge (“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”). Short-sighted, gentlemen. Very short-sighted. If this situation isn’t fairly addressed, last year’s protests will just be the beginning. Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.
Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
From the Daily Beast;
Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!
(thedailybeast.com)
Warning, harsh language at the source.
What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.
I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bull**** persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-****ing-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.
Much, MUCH more at the source. One of the best tirades I've heard in a long time, and it speaks to the core of the current ongoing political dissension.
There was a time when people viewed the government as a public service, there to provide for the common good of all Americans, rich and poor. The government wasn't a for-profit corporation, out to keep itself in the black, nor was it means to control and dominate every facet of your social or personal life, by invasive privacy-robbing dominionists. People used to believe in America, that's why they were willing to pay their fair into the system, to keep it strong. But now we have a class of super-wealthy elite, who are doing everything they can to undermine that system, to keep the system so skewed in their favor that it all but eliminates the ability for competition - it reduces America to a vassal state of the select wealthy.
Originally posted by Bluesma
Originally posted by buster2010
Has anyone noticed that the people who earned their wealth seems to have no problem paying taxes? The ones that are always whining about taxes are the ones who inherited their wealth the ones who didn't work for it. Unless you call waiting for mommy and daddy to die working.
This is the thing I keep noting! In my family, and their entourage, many are supportive of more taxes being placed on the rich... and yet they ARE that rich, and acknowledge they are ready to do so. They are also people that came from poor backgrounds and struggled and worked hard to get where they are.
I run into people who defend the old trickle down theory and insist the rich shouldn't be required to pay more taxes, but up to this point, those have all been people who are not of that more affluent population we are speaking of.
(Maybe there is people reading this that are exceptions to that, and welcome them to say so , that I hear them out and take note, this is just what I have collected in experience so far)
But I admit it does make me wonder about the Stockholm syndrome type of explanation....
Or the simple way people like to have figures in society that represent a potential of being free from all responsibility, duty, to the collective. The possibility of believing that "if I struggle and suffer, I can be one day rewarded with total freedom and benefit of power, without responsibility with it." (is it a coincidence so many right wing people are also into religion that promises a similar idea?)
People live their dreams through such figures and personalities they identify with and admire. Even if they never get there themselves.
Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
reply to post by buster2010
Basically what all that means is that King thinks that wealthy people are mostly not enough like him...ie...not as unselfish as him and that it requires govt to make them "do their fair share". So in effect, because King can afford to make donations, he wants the govt to force others to, he's a Statist through and through.
Originally posted by tinfoilman
reply to post by Blackmarketeer
I guess if he wants to be taxed then tax him. While it may fix certain problems, it will not fix the problem we're actually having right now. Unfortunately he does not understand our current situation.
The problem is the poor have an unusual shortage of money. The reason is because we're post housing crisis. The vast majority of money in this country is created when loans are taken out. Take out a loan, most of that money is created right then and there.
After the housing crisis banks stopped loaning and people stopped borrowing. This caused the money supply to shrink. This made money harder to get. Remember all the talk about how the banks aren't loaning after the bailout? Well that's the problem. Taxing the rich isn't going to make them loan more money either. We'll still have the same problem.
The rich don't even have enough money to make a dent in the problem anyway. It's that big of a problem. But mainly because, taking money out of an economy that already doesn't have enough money is stupid. You wouldn't fill up an empty bucket by taking water out would you?
The actual problem won't get fixed until we either change our money system, or people start borrowing again and therefore buying again. But that won't happen unless they have real wealth to back the loan up, like a job for example, and a car to get back and forth to work to pay said loan back and a road to drive it on.
What we need is infrastructure investment like high ways, bridges, dams, power plants, levies, fiber broadband. Something to give people jobs so they borrow and buy houses. Something that actually creates jobs for the 99% and which increases the tax base. Getting the 99% jobs is going to create much more tax revenue than the 1% even have let alone tax.
If they did tax the rich it would only be enough to increase the debt. That's right, INCREASE! The gov borrows so fast that even if they raised taxes on the rich the debt would still increase. The money would just vanish into a meaningless debt and help no one.
So, we're going to tax the rich to still be broke? That's kinda retarded. If we're gonna be broke either way, then just keep the money. After all, It's not like rich people's money just sits there. They invest it. Or the bank invests it.
Most of the time that money isn't even in the hands of the rich. 99% of the time rich people's money are in the hands in the poor being loaned out and used to buy stuff and keep the economy going. It's just the rich don't know that because the bank doesn't tell them who they loaned it to.
But the problem right now is nobody has a job to borrow that money and put it to use, and second nobody wants to build infrastructure in a country that has no jobs. Build a road to abandoned industrial park because all the jobs went to Mexico? What's the point?
The solution to the problem is to ask why people have to borrow and be in debt in the first place or else our money supply dries up and we starve to death?
The answer to that question is the fractional reserve banking system that's ran by the Federal Reserve.
Originally posted by jude11
Originally posted by Hydrawolf
Old news...5 months old infact!
Wow...
1st post in and you're setting us straight.
Peace
edit on 1-9-2012 by jude11 because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by Dr Expired
reply to post by EvilSadamClone
Some say the rich get richer, by making others work harder and then reaping the fruit of others sweat.
But that isn't borne out by fact ..is it?
Stephen King got rich by collecting money for words he put on paper, perhaps he should drive a bus for awhile or be a cleaner, see how his opinion may change then or not.
Stephen knows better than anyone that there can only be a certain number of horror writers, or else he wouldn't be earning enough to worry about tax.
Originally posted by RealSpoke
reply to post by AfterInfinity
Do you realize exactly how much of America you covered in at least half of those bullet points?
Uh no, the majority of people are not sociopaths or psychopaths..
Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
So we should just punish them for being rich by taking away 99% of everything they own and giving them to the lazy people who don't want to work because they deserve more than the rich do. Okey dokey, that sounds good to me.
Which is why I believe in the flat tax, with no loop holes.
Originally posted by CaptainIraq
Ah yes, another article/thread operating under the false presumption that tax dollars actually go to helping those in need, and not into the pockets of politicians, government bureaucrats and their cronies.
It makes sense, if you think about it, that you'd have all of these celebrities coming out in support of increasing taxes on the rich. It garners them more respect among a 'certain' element within the younger generation. Besides, even if their taxes should get increased a little (which is very unlikely to happen), they already have so much that they likely won't even notice the little extra is gone.
Whatever the case, I would really like to live in this dream world Mr. King apparently inhabits, where we all give a little money to the government and magically there is no more crime or hunger or homelessness or sickness. Sounds like a pretty nice place.