The Glade 4.0

My biggest question for those complaining about that 1% that have money is, what difference does it make?

Bill Gates' fortune doesn't diminish my life at all.

I just don't know why it's an issue.

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In time, this too shall pass.

In their view when the rich get richer, everyone else necessarily gets poorer in a zero sum game. However, it's a false dilemma due to wealth creation. An example is someone borrowing a saw from a rich guy to cut down a tree and build a chair. The new chair is created wealth.

Because the current economic system in unfair and affords them preferential treatment from start to finish. They (the ones who make money from capital gains) pay a lower tax rate than everyone else, don't have to pay payroll taxes like everyone else, and in many cases are basically legally entitled to your money no matter what they do. Don't like Bank of America's policies? Well, if you decide not to bank there they get your money anyway because they're too big to fail. If I can't pay my debts I get my stuff repossessed and get thrown into the street. If Citigroup can't pay its debts, I have to pay them. Oh and the people who ran Citigroup into the situation where I have to pay their debts get >$100 million golden parachutes that I also have to pay for.

Tax rates aren't what keep people poor and the rich livin' large.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

See, this type of logic is everything that is wrong with modern liberalism. What, exactly can one purchase where the fee is based on a percentage of their income? It isn't the percentage that matters, it's the amount. And the amount of taxes paid by the wealthy is staggering. The top 1% of all earners pay more than 40% of all taxes collected. I do agree with you that we should lower the amount of taxes paid by middle-income earners.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

If you already own $5 million, you don't have to pay taxes on it. If you stick all your money in a mattress you don't pay taxes on it. Sure capital gains tax is 15%, but to get the capital in the first place you need to pay a large tax rate just like everybody else. People who earn an income pay taxes on that income and the rate is higher for large earners.

If there is a better system than this, could you please suggest it? I partly attribute things we take for granted like the 75 - 80 year life expectancy, the Internet, etc. to capitalism where investments do not get punished with heavy taxes.

Like I've suggested many times, we could have a flat income tax that applies to all forms of income and is set at the same rate for everyone.

The issues you highlight are due to legislative policy for the most part, and while I don't think they're sound policy, they don't diminish my life a bit.

Entitlement programs are the much more costly, as far as a drain on the taxes I pay, and even they don't diminish my life. It's not really a matter of what's fair, unless one insists that taxes aren't fair...but I realize they're part of a social contract that I get more benefit from than diminished by. And, in relation to that social contract, the contribution from that 1% who are being protested against is greater by far than any other economic demographic, so I don't see any lack of fairness from that.

I guess your argument just doesn't make much sense to me.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Man, is it just me, or does that guy, use commas, way too much?

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Ron Paul 2012

I, think, its, just: you.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Socialism is the long and painful transition between capitalism and capitalism.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

And Lolbertarianism is the fantasy of people with cushy lifestyles in a stable society.

So what's Colbertarianism?

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Holy shitsnacks!

1) You are under the mistaken impression that the 1% were all born with their money and don't actually work. While a typical liberal characterization, doesn't match reality. Some are, sure, but in any given listing of the worlds richest, a majority are self made by their own efforts. So the "them", or the 1% being used by yourself and these protestors, aren't deriving all their income from capital gains, so the 1% aren't paying only 15% taxes.

2) Hammering capital gains income hurts which class the most?

3) Even if it were true that the 1% were born with that wealth and only ever gained income via returns on investment, so only paid 15% taxes, that would still have them paying a higher final tax rate than 50%+ of the US population. That 50% had better count their stars the other 48% don't started occupying Welfare.

Average withholding over a year for anyone who makes $22,000 or more is enough to cap yearly contributions in an Roth IRA until you're 50.

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The problem with saving money with a low income is that it takes a lot of work to live so frugally, and you have to deal with constant feelings of temptation from abstaining from consumer products, restaurants, and so on.

Oh noz! I might want something I can't have? For shame.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Well you can have it if you don't save.

Sure you can, just wait till the government forces loose credit rules in the interest of stimulating the economy.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

For an individual with no dependents, I agree, its doable.

Why is the obsession with income?

Why not a flat sales tax?

Why is it we need to take our cut out of "success," and not "lifestyle"?

Taxing spending means that if you budget well and live frugally, you're not penalized for saving and retiring early if you're successful. Taxing income means that even if you're successful, it's harder to save. And then, if people have their way and you made wise investments with your savings, we'll tax you again after you retire, too!

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It's a delusion, Kaffis. The individuals obsessed with taxing income and wealth have this delusional notion that because I'm rich, they aren't. It's completely unfathomable to Xequecal or Monty or TheRiov that I got where I am through my own efforts. I must have, somehow, disproportionately benefited from some ephemeral and amorphous social contract to save the money and acquire the things I have. They've been telling me this for close to a decade now.

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Maybe it is because your huggalubadoozly?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

How did I get drawn into this?

If you create something or provide a service through your labor, and trade it to someone else for money, then it was a fair trade. You were not gifted anything by society.

I might have said differently in the past but it was because I didn't think it through.

edit:

I think what can be questioned is whether you really own your own 'capital' and the product of your efforts. I mean capital in the sense of if you had 10 slaves, those can be considered capital that produce something which you then own. Your self is just another form.