The Glade 4.0

I love this notion that the guy with investments sits around doing nothing. Especially if that's his primary means of income.

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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 is good to see that you have learned absolutely nothing new since you have been gone.

What prevents a person who "busts their ***" from having investments?

What prevents someone who busted their *** and was successful with their investments from retiring and enjoying the fruits of their labors?

What gives you the right to determine who is allowed to receive the fruits of anothers labor?

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

You need a certain amount of money to live on. Let's say $30,000. A person that makes $35,000 has $5,000 available for investments, or 1/7 of their income. A person who makes $3 million has $2,970,000 available for investments, or 99% of their income. Also, a person with more money to invest has dramatically greater profit potential, because he can diversify in high risk, high-EV investments with a far, far smaller risk of losing everything.

That said, the current system would be patently unfair to the wealthy if it actually worked as advertised. It's absolutely unfair for them to have to pay taxes twice on the same income. But most capital gains of the very wealthy are never recorded as income, they sit in the investments for the person's whole life then get funneled through various trusts and tax shelters to their heirs when they die to dodge the high income taxes.



The exact same thing that gives "me" the right to levy any taxes at all, for any purpose. Pretty much every government function is wealth redistribution in some form.

and it is the right of someone to take their money otu of the system to say **** you to those who would take it from them.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

*sighs*

Xequecal, please stop talking about taxes. You do not understand how they work. You keep perpetuating blatant falsehoods as gospel truth.

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No, I really don't, but I do remember Warren Buffett saying he pays less taxes than his secretary does, which you explained was because he holds most of his money in trusts that aren't subject to tax.

I'm betting his secretary has a more opulent lifestyle than Warren has, too.

Putting money in a trust very common - I'm fairly sure you have money in a trust.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/art ... 30,00.html

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In time, this too shall pass.

Because it's free capital and has no right to be taxed in the first place.

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Look, I'll freely admit I don't really understand how the tax system works. But there is clear, obvious evidence of very rich people paying a much smaller percentage of their income in taxes to the government than your average middle class worker. Yet you continue to insist that taxes on the "rich" are criminally high. I get the fact that the rich pay most of the taxes, but that's just because they have the vast majority of the wealth. They don't pay at a higher rate, at least not after you factor in all the shelters and loopholes and whatever.

Xequecal:

Those people don't have income.

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I don't understand how you can continue believing that... you seem to assign a heavier weigh to anecdotal evidence than to facts.

The top 5% pay over 50% and the top 1% pay 25% of the total income tax revenue. Tax tables are graduated, with the highest earners paying the largest percentages. 47% pay no income tax at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax ... ted_States

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In time, this too shall pass.

But they are getting wealthier. On an immense scale, too. I don't understand how you can justify giving them a free pass on all the money they're making and insist that the poor and middle class pick up the tab for all the government spending.

I'm not trying to lead a crusade against the wealthy here. I'm really not. But as you yourself have pointed out, over the past few decades the rich-poor gap has only increased, real wages have either stayed flat or gone down, and all the money being made is being made at the top. So please tell me, how does this problem get solved by removing taxes on the rich, but not on anyone else? They're already kicking everyone else's ***. Making it easier on them will suddenly level the playing field?

You're right. These investors should have their assets seized and we should send them back to the farming communities so they can reacquaint themselves with the purity of the hard-working farmer.

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The Dude abides.

Try reading this and then try to find documentation, not assertions, to support your argument.

http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/2010/20100410055902.aspx
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

Folks that are in the bottom 50% of income paid an average of less than 3% of their income, the average of all taxpayers paid 12%, and the top 1% paid 22%

X, your opinions aren't backed up by facts.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Because the poor and middle class don't pick up the tab for government spending. The top 5% of earners pay 95% of income taxes. The bottom 50% of earners pay 0% of income taxes. How on earth can you make the claim that the poor and middle class are picking up the tab? More to the point, they aren't get any wealthier in any sense that actually avoids taxation. When investments are capitalized, the people with investments pay taxes--end of story. Trust funds take already capitalized wealth and put said wealth in a secured fund indexed to inflation. This means the real money value of that trust RARELY if ever exceeds the rate of inflation. More to the point, long term and short term investments are both subject to the AMT at the highest applicable income tax marginal across the entirety of the gains. This means that the investor is actually taxed higher than the wage earner.

But, you would know that if you understood all the brouhaha about the AMT Patch.

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First of all, practically everyone here is for cutting taxes in general, not just on the rich, and then cutting government spending.

Second, so what if they're getting wealthier? It isn't like there's some magic point where "ZOMG they're getting too wealthy! We need to raise taxes!"

Third, even with significant tax cuts for the rich, the poor and middle classes would be nowhere near picking up the tab for spending. It's been pointed out repeatedly what a massive share of public spending is paid for by a very few rich people. This would be even more true if we actually stopped wasting so much on worthless social programs.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm completely aware that the top few percent of earners pay the majority of the income tax, yes. But as this article even points out, the lower classes have to pay payroll taxes, which the very rich basically do not pay at all because they have an earnings cap. My whole point has been that they pay a much lower percentage of the wealth they're accumulating (not necessarily what's narrowly defined as "income") than everyone else, and the reason they still pay most of the taxes despite this is because they just have that much more money than everyone else.

But honestly, I'm basically completely lost on this whole issue. I've pointed out before that 50 years ago when things were "better," the top income tax bracket was 95%. You guys say that the full amount of this tax was never actually collected. Is the full amount of the current 35% tax rate actually collected? I just don't see the logic on how cutting taxation on the rich only will suddenly make them less able to gain a bigger share of the pie. Because if you look at the numbers the government publishes, as the top income tax bracket has gone down, real wages have gone down, and the share of the country owned by the wealthy has only increased.

It's not about them getting "too wealthy," it's about the rich-poor gap constantly increasing, and more and more money concentrating at the top. If the tax levels suffered by the rich are truly crippling and unfair, how do they continue to beat out the rest of us who are comparatively getting a free ride?

Xequecal:

Real Wages have decreased for reasons having nothing to do with the wealthy. Perhaps you should be more critical of the politicians using the government control of the economy to keep you poor. And, just perhaps, you should be really critical of the party responsible.

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Wealth is not static.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

The bottom 50% pay an average of less than 3%, the top 1% paid 22% of their income. You just need to stop believing assertions and look up the published figures. That, and you really need to get a grip on what "income" is.

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In time, this too shall pass.

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Hopwin:

Nah, it's pretty much one party. The sooner you accept that we live in a One Party government, the sooner you can go about deciding how to deal with it.

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Yes, they paid 22% of their income. As has been pointed out, capital gains are not "income" and thus do not count under this figure. But it certainly makes you richer to have a bunch of capital gains. Also, when they refer to the bottom 50% paying an average of less than 3%, it again refers only the percentage of their income paid out into income taxes. It doesn't count payroll taxes at all, despite the fact that they still have to pay them and they still make them poorer just like any other tax.

Mao would like to have a word with you.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine