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Source: (consider it) Thread: Yes, it's class war. And your point is...?
Adeodatus
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The term "class war" has been getting a few outings recently. Most prominently in yesterday's and today's headlines, Barack Obama's hope that he might raise taxes for the most wealthy has been met with spluttering outrage: "This is class war!"

But when the 85 richest people in the world have the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion - link - does the class war become a just war? And if, as Oxfam alleges, that the people who own half the world's wealth might squeeze into a double decker bus, might it not be an act of justice to drive that bus off a cliff?

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Anglican't
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1. Killing rich people by driving them off a cliff wouldn't actually make everyone else richer would it, except in terms of some statistical exercise? Whether you can afford your weekly grocery shop doesn't change if Bill Gates is dead.

2. I don't think the very richest really travel by bus. Especially not double-deckers.

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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
1. Killing rich people by driving them off a cliff wouldn't actually make everyone else richer would it, except in terms of some statistical exercise?

But it would go so viral on Youtube.

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Anglican't
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
1. Killing rich people by driving them off a cliff wouldn't actually make everyone else richer would it, except in terms of some statistical exercise?

But it would go so viral on Youtube.
Unless you spice it up a bit I can't see a straight-forward drive off a cliff being more exciting than a Russian car crash compilation.
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Golden Key
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Maybe *they* could do viral videos of signing most of their wealth over to the poor?

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
1. Killing rich people by driving them off a cliff wouldn't actually make everyone else richer would it, except in terms of some statistical exercise?

Well, technically, once you've killed all the rich people, you've also killed all the heirs of the rich people, and their property will pass to the state as bona vacantia. You could view that as making everyone else richer, at least temporarily [Smile]
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Lord Jestocost
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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Well, technically, once you've killed all the rich people, you've also killed all the heirs of the rich people, and their property will pass to the state as bona vacantia.

But many will already have bred and the wealth will go to the descendants, so the cycle will repeat. You'll only be able to pull off this double decker trick with a couple of generations before the message sinks in that they shouldn't take the bus.

In fact, has this already happened? Is this why the rich and privileged are so determined to destroy public transport?

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Anglican't
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quote:
Originally posted by Lord Jestocost:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Well, technically, once you've killed all the rich people, you've also killed all the heirs of the rich people...

But many will already have bred and the wealth will go to the descendants
I can picture a dismayed Adeodatus, AK-47 in hand, muttering to himself 'we're gonna need a bigger bus'.
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Caissa
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The rich have been waging class warfare since the dawn of time.
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Adeodatus
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Hm... I can see my charming and light hearted style mean I'm going to have a problem keeping this Purgatorial rather than Heavenly.

So anyway, on the subject of "class war"...?

[Cross-posted with Caissa. Yes! How is it that "class war" is (supposedly) okay when it's in the other directione?]

[ 21. January 2015, 11:44: Message edited by: Adeodatus ]

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quetzalcoatl
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But, surely, God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate?

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Sioni Sais
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One of the problems of class war (whether in quotes or not) is that the rich and wealthy own different weapons to the poor.

In simply owning stuff they can determine where people live and, to a great extent control prices. If they own enterprises in different countries they can put people out of work pretty much as they choose and, best of all, in usinbg the weapons at disposal they are actually protected by the law of the land. But then, they would be, because until very recently they alone were involved in making the law.

The poor by contrast possess less wealth. They are dependent, to a lesser or greater extent, on the rich for the means to make a living. The means the poor have devised to oppose the interest of the wealthy have been eroded wherever they have existed to the point where they are of little consequence.

Where those who are not rich have much beyond the very basic needs, they are told they should be grateful forr what they have.

eta: Hope that's got things back on track [Biased]

[ 21. January 2015, 11:52: Message edited by: Sioni Sais ]

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Tortuf
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The very rich pay less tax per dollar of income than the poor and the middle class. Part of this is due to some notion that enough tax is enough.

Part of this is due to the fact that the very rich can afford to buy:

1. Their own pet politicians who enact "tax reforms" in the name of anything other than this is payback for all the campaign money you have given me and I expect to get from you next time around; not to mention all the "investment opportunities" you are going to let me in on.

2. Pay the braying shills at Faux News to trumpet any attempt to stop yet another tax break for the very rich as just an ultra liberal effort to tear apart the fabric of our society.

So, while I appreciate President Obama suggesting it, it was just a way to point out the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. It is unlikely be a serious effort at change.

Imagining sending all those people to their deaths is an amusing pastime - although not exactly good for your long term serenity.

Instead, it might be a better idea to start thinking of ways to empower the poor and the middle class to actually look at their situations and then GO VOTE. If people voted their actual interests, as opposed to what they hear are their actual interests, it really wouldn't matter how much money was spent on campaigns.

How to accomplish that is well beyond me. I have no idea how to reduce evaluations of how systems work and how they affect peoples lives into easy to repeat slogans.

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Anglican't
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quote:
Originally posted by Caissa:
The rich have been waging class warfare since the dawn of time.

Damn those entrepreneurs with their job-creating businesses!
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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Caissa:
The rich have been waging class warfare since the dawn of time.

Damn those entrepreneurs with their job-creating businesses!
Yeah, cos those profiteers and asset-strippers in our banks create jobs for ... ooh ... tens of people. It makes up for the thousands they destroy.

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Albertus
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I don't see any necessary connection between entrepreneurial business and class war. People like Anglican't don't seem to realise that Anglo-American neoliberalism - which does IMO wage class war- is not the only way to do business. Countries like Sweden, Finland, aand Japan all manage to combine a good deal of equality and social cohesion with (on the whole, over time) effective and successful capitalist economies.
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Sioni Sais
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Caissa:
The rich have been waging class warfare since the dawn of time.

Damn those entrepreneurs with their job-creating businesses!
I'm sure the jobs are created out of the goodness of their hearts rather than for any additional wealth that might accrue. These jobs might be created but every effort is then made to keep wages as low as possible, sometimes through persuading governments to top them up to a subsistence level out of taxation which, as we have seen, is levied for the most part on the poor and middle classes.

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mark_in_manchester

not waving, but...
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quote:
Damn those entrepreneurs with their job-creating businesses!
I smell a false dichotomy.

I celebrate entrepreneurs with their job-creating businesses. Especially where their services and products reduce waste, illness, hunger, ignorance...as has, at least sometimes, been the case through history.

But unless their entrepreneurial skills lie in very basic club-, spade- or pick-wielding (direct personal involvement in primary industry) then their wealth is predicated on the context of a society in which to become wealthy.

This used to mean they needed a healthy-ish, educated-ish workforce and a more-or-less crime-free, stable and predictable business environment. Increasingly in this era of 'financial services', just the last one will do - but it requires a really sophisticated, modern society to provide the context for you (or me) to make a killing on derivatives or oil futures.

So - those nearing the 'top' owe their wealth increasingly to the society in which they exist - and it is therefore just to tax them accordingly. Only farmers and miners have much of an excuse to say they are 'self-made', but even there you can't eat gold and you need someone to stop everyone else nicking your carrots.

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Soror Magna
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Caissa:
The rich have been waging class warfare since the dawn of time.

Damn those entrepreneurs with their job-creating businesses!
Not all entrepeneurs are rich. Not all rich people are entrepeneurs. Not all entrepeneurs create jobs - as a matter of fact, some *cough* *Mitt Romney* *cough* specialize in destroying other people's jobs.

If you look closely, you will find very few entrepeneurs among the very rich, if your definition of entrepreneur is someone who risks their own money. Everybody's favourite rich guy, Warren Buffett, for example, got rich investing other people's money - the insurance premiums paid by millions of ordinary people.

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Anglican't
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To give some context to the discussion, the Guardian has helpfully listed who these 85 people are.

I don't have time to look at the list closely at the moment but while it includes the Ship's favourite newspaper propietor Rupert Murdoch and a few Russian oligarchs, it also includes a number of people from Microsoft, from Apple and Mark Zuckerberg. Are these people we want to be shepherding onto the bus before its final journey?

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Anglican't
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quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Anglo-American neoliberalism...does IMO wage class war

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by this. What does 'class war' mean in this context?
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Mere Nick
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quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
The very rich pay less tax per dollar of income than the poor and the middle class. Part of this is due to some notion that enough tax is enough.

Not when it comes to the federal income tax.

[Fix UBB code]

[ 21. January 2015, 22:15: Message edited by: TonyK ]

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Sober Preacher's Kid

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Facts, please. The Rich generally have investment income and especially business income which has a wider array of deductions available than wage income. Hence lower tax per dollar.

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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
To give some context to the discussion, the Guardian has helpfully listed who these 85 people are.

I don't have time to look at the list closely at the moment but while it includes the Ship's favourite newspaper propietor Rupert Murdoch and a few Russian oligarchs, it also includes a number of people from Microsoft, from Apple and Mark Zuckerberg. Are these people we want to be shepherding onto the bus before its final journey?

Look at it another way. Take one of the top 85 somewhere in the middle of that number. Say their net worth is about $15bn. Well, naively at least, $14bn of that could pay 7000 people a salary of $40000 for 50 years, and the rich person would still have a billion dollars left.

Still, I'm sure they have another very good use for that other $14bn.

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Anglican't
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Still, I'm sure they have another very good use for that other $14bn.

They might indeed.
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Sioni Sais
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quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
The very rich pay less tax per dollar of income than the poor and the middle class. Part of this is due to some notion that enough tax is enough.

Not when it comes to the federal income tax.
There's more to tax than (federal) income tax. Indirect taxes are regressive, ie, the more you earn, the less you pay as a proportion of income.

Also, wealth itself is only taxed on transfer and, armed with a competent accountant, a lot of tax liability can be avoided, thanks to a tax system made by and for the rich.

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cliffdweller
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Yes, of course it's a class war. And the wealthy are winning. Massively. But the really irritating thing is this:

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Most prominently in yesterday's and today's headlines, Barack Obama's hope that he might raise taxes for the most wealthy has been met with spluttering outrage: "This is class war!"

But when the 85 richest people in the world have the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion - link - does the class war become a just war? And if, as Oxfam alleges, that the people who own half the world's wealth might squeeze into a double decker bus, might it not be an act of justice to drive that bus off a cliff?

Raising taxes is not driving a bus off a cliff. I know for people who worship money, who find the acquiring and hoarding of money to be the center of their universe, it may feel like murder, but it's really not. It just isn't. The rich will not die if we raise their taxes. They won't cease to exist. They won't go out of business. They won't even cease to be extraordinarily wealthy.

otoh, cutting or eliminating things like health care, food stamps, and welfare benefits does kill people. Not in the figurative, metaphorical, hyperbolic way that we talk about driving a busload of wealthy people over a cliff, but in the real, no-longer-living sort of way. That kind of death. So when we talk about a class war and the way the two sides have different weapons, we also need to remember that the collateral damage is very different as well.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Caissa:
The rich have been waging class warfare since the dawn of time.

Damn those entrepreneurs with their job-creating businesses!
Oooh, that's so cuuute! "Trickle Down" turned out to be the wee of rich folk, not so much resource. And these days, with so much outsource, who are getting the jobs?

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Mere Nick
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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
Facts, please. The Rich generally have investment income and especially business income which has a wider array of deductions available than wage income. Hence lower tax per dollar.

Of course there are costs for a business to earn income, so what? If the business is a S, partnership, LLC, LLP, etc, with the income flowing through to the owners, then it is picked up in their AGI. Unless their businesses aren't doing well at all, then they will still be a higher tax bracket.

Here is a summary that provides the latest available (2012) data about who is really paying the federal income tax based on returns filed.

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Mere Nick
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
The very rich pay less tax per dollar of income than the poor and the middle class. Part of this is due to some notion that enough tax is enough.

Not when it comes to the federal income tax.
There's more to tax than (federal) income tax. Indirect taxes are regressive, ie, the more you earn, the less you pay as a proportion of income.

Also, wealth itself is only taxed on transfer and, armed with a competent accountant, a lot of tax liability can be avoided, thanks to a tax system made by and for the rich.

Of course there is more tax than just federal income tax. However, with what was tossed out at the SOTU, that's all that seems worth discussing, right now.

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"Well that's it, boys. I've been redeemed. The preacher's done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting's my reward."
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Sioni Sais
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quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
The very rich pay less tax per dollar of income than the poor and the middle class. Part of this is due to some notion that enough tax is enough.

Not when it comes to the federal income tax.
There's more to tax than (federal) income tax. Indirect taxes are regressive, ie, the more you earn, the less you pay as a proportion of income.

Also, wealth itself is only taxed on transfer and, armed with a competent accountant, a lot of tax liability can be avoided, thanks to a tax system made by and for the rich.

Of course there is more tax than just federal income tax. However, with what was tossed out at the SOTU, that's all that seems worth discussing, right now.
That might be all you want to discuss, but it isn't all that is relevant. The class war is fought on many fronts.

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Fr Weber
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It's class war all right, and the rich are scared shitless that the poor might actually start fighting back.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
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Would I agree to pay more tax? -putting it into context, I pay more 2-3 times more in income tax than the average person earns in a year. My answer is yes, I would pay more, but only if: the social safety net in our society properly covered all of us. By this I mean: broader rather than narrower publicly funded health care and stopping de-insurance of some medical services, retirement benefits from the gov't pension plan that were actually something a person could live on, disability insurance that didn't cut an ill person off after 2 years, college and university education that is free or for only nominal tuition and probably a stipend for students so they graduate without debts, subsidized daycare that is regulated and licensed and completely affordable for all, investment in public infrastructure like transportation, parks, public access to recreational and fitness facilities, control on prices of housing. Among other things. I don't agree with the increasing disparity between those who have and those who have not.

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Organ Builder
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quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:
Of course there is more tax than just federal income tax. However, with what was tossed out at the SOTU, that's all that seems worth discussing, right now.

How odd. I would have thought you would find capital gains taxes equally worth discussion.

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Albertus
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Anglo-American neoliberalism...does IMO wage class war

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by this. What does 'class war' mean in this context?
I mean that this kind of capitalism is based fairly explicitly on social division and is designed to ensure that those at the top of the pile get aand keep as much as possible, preferring where necessary to rely on force to maintain that division of wealth and income. It's a conqueror mentality which retreats into fortified strongholds and views those outside them as potentially hostile and alien.
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Organ Builder
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quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
I mean that this kind of capitalism is based fairly explicitly on social division and is designed to ensure that those at the top of the pile get aand keep as much as possible, preferring where necessary to rely on force to maintain that division of wealth and income.

Taken to its extreme, it could remind one of 1789 in Paris--and we all know how that ended.

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Beeswax Altar
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
To give some context to the discussion, the Guardian has helpfully listed who these 85 people are.

I don't have time to look at the list closely at the moment but while it includes the Ship's favourite newspaper propietor Rupert Murdoch and a few Russian oligarchs, it also includes a number of people from Microsoft, from Apple and Mark Zuckerberg. Are these people we want to be shepherding onto the bus before its final journey?

Look at it another way. Take one of the top 85 somewhere in the middle of that number. Say their net worth is about $15bn. Well, naively at least, $14bn of that could pay 7000 people a salary of $40000 for 50 years, and the rich person would still have a billion dollars left.

Still, I'm sure they have another very good use for that other $14bn.

Do you think somebody with $15 billion has the entire sum laying around in hard currency and precious metals? Because they don't. No, the wealthy have the money invested in something. Somebody is using that money to do something to make more money. You assume that the government could pay the salary of 7000 people to do something more productive with that money. I agree that's a possibility.

A few questions...

Who are these people?
What will they be doing?
Why is what they will be doing worthwhile?
If it really needs to be done, why isn't it already being done?
For that matter, who gets to decide what those 7000 people do for their $40,000?
Do the 7000 people have any choice about what they do for their $40,000 a year?
What happens in 50 years when you no longer have any ultra wealthy to tax?

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stonespring
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Does it seem to anyone else that the very world "class" (as in socioeconomic class) has become politically incorrect in many situations in the US? Is this the case in other countries? In school for example, we would talk about the class issues in literature or in history but when it came to current events - or especially when it involved discussing our own community and the families in our own school - it was impolite to use the term class and it was instead referred to indirectly with terms like "socioeconomic diversity" and "income Inequality" - which point to class issues, but they don't emphasize that people in a given class - even in a country like America where even the poor believe they can become rich, where people often vote against their class's financial interests, and where both the poor and the rich often call themselves "middle class" when they are asked - even in America people in a given class tend to have common interests that they often find themselves defending whether they intend to or not - if not always at the ballot box. The different classes also have hostilities against other classes and often feel uncomfortable when they are not around people of the same class - although members of the classes often are not aware or do not want to talk publicly about the fact that it is class that causes these feelings.
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Arethosemyfeet
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Even if you dropped that money straight into the pockets of the 70000 poorest people each year (4k a pop) it would pay huge dividends in terms of economic growth. Money spent tends to go around the economy a lot faster than money tied up in savings or investments. You'd make those people better off and improve the economy at the same time.
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Fr Weber
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quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
Does it seem to anyone else that the very world "class" (as in socioeconomic class) has become politically incorrect in many situations in the US? Is this the case in other countries? In school for example, we would talk about the class issues in literature or in history but when it came to current events - or especially when it involved discussing our own community and the families in our own school - it was impolite to use the term class and it was instead referred to indirectly with terms like "socioeconomic diversity" and "income Inequality" - which point to class issues, but they don't emphasize that people in a given class - even in a country like America where even the poor believe they can become rich, where people often vote against their class's financial interests, and where both the poor and the rich often call themselves "middle class" when they are asked - even in America people in a given class tend to have common interests that they often find themselves defending whether they intend to or not - if not always at the ballot box. The different classes also have hostilities against other classes and often feel uncomfortable when they are not around people of the same class - although members of the classes often are not aware or do not want to talk publicly about the fact that it is class that causes these feelings.

In the US, we have a shared-world fiction setting where we all agree that there is no such thing as social class. Everyone in the USA is equal.

It follows that therefore class has nothing to do with social inequality. Gender and race explain everything.

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Sioni Sais
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quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Even if you dropped that money straight into the pockets of the 70000 poorest people each year (4k a pop) it would pay huge dividends in terms of economic growth. Money spent tends to go around the economy a lot faster than money tied up in savings or investments. You'd make those people better off and improve the economy at the same time.

Most (but not all) measures of GDP rely on money moving, and GDP is often used to measure the economy. Measuring organic growth in the economy is more difficult, but money is like manure in that if you spread it around it does a lot of good, while if you pile it up, it stinks.

What gets to me is that while the rich say it's important for them to have wealth beyond what is needed to live on, so they can invest, yadda, yadda, they do very little to enable others to do the same. It's akin to those who extol marriage but object to persons of the same sex doing so.

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Beeswax Altar
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quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Even if you dropped that money straight into the pockets of the 70000 poorest people each year (4k a pop) it would pay huge dividends in terms of economic growth. Money spent tends to go around the economy a lot faster than money tied up in savings or investments. You'd make those people better off and improve the economy at the same time.

Really?

All we need is some super rich Obama supporter to pony up $3.5 billion for a 12 year experiment.

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Doc Tor
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Even if you dropped that money straight into the pockets of the 70000 poorest people each year (4k a pop) it would pay huge dividends in terms of economic growth. Money spent tends to go around the economy a lot faster than money tied up in savings or investments. You'd make those people better off and improve the economy at the same time.

Really?

All we need is some super rich Obama supporter to pony up $3.5 billion for a 12 year experiment.

We don't need an experiment, because it's been shown to be true. All we need is the will to do it.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
No, the wealthy have the money invested in something. Somebody is using that money to do something to make more money.

Not all investments are equally useful to the rest of the economy or society.
That's even ignoring investments in bubbles.

One factor AIUI is liquidity. Investments that pay off straight away are better for investors than those that pay off steadily over time. Unfortunately, investments that pay off straight away aren't of much use to people actually trying to get a business off the ground. You get better rates of return by asset stripping, cutting investment in plant and workforce, and so on - activities that overall depress the economy.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

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Forgive me, but dropping money into people's pockets, who may lack the skills and knowledge to know how to handle it, is exactly why dropping coins into the hats of beggars is not the right idea. The right idea is to have programs to help the homeless not to be homeless by dealing with their health, mental health and social issues, providing job skills, and helping them to have stable housing. Of course, in the absence of such programs, we are currently stuck with dropping money directly into the hats of the homeless. Often the small amounts of money are spent on the wrong things: alcohol or drugs. Which is why the liquor board stores report so much activity on welfare cheque days.

I'll say it again: I'd pay more taxes if something legitimately helpful was being done with it on a programmatic basis. As if is, I identify causes I think are worthy and given money, for which I get, of course, an additional tax break. Which means that a donation of $50,000 costs me one-half or one-third of the amount.

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cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Forgive me, but dropping money into people's pockets, who may lack the skills and knowledge to know how to handle it, is exactly why dropping coins into the hats of beggars is not the right idea. The right idea is to have programs to help the homeless not to be homeless by dealing with their health, mental health and social issues, providing job skills, and helping them to have stable housing. Of course, in the absence of such programs, we are currently stuck with dropping money directly into the hats of the homeless. Often the small amounts of money are spent on the wrong things: alcohol or drugs. Which is why the liquor board stores report so much activity on welfare cheque days.

The working poor are not precisely the same as the homeless-- at least not yet (though the growing income inequality does seem to be pushing us that way). The point of the studies referenced above is that when you put more $$ in the pockets of the working poor it almost always is used to pay for consumer goods and services-- the things that drive the economy and produce jobs. Far more so than just giving a tax cut to the so-called "job creators". As was noted above, there may be be even more desirable ways to goose the economy through directed incentives to invest in long-range things like infrastructure, renewable energy or education, but if all else fails, putting cash in the hands of the working poor is a better investment for the country overall than putting it in the hands of the 1%ers.

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Doublethink.
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When people push hardline capitalism as the way to do things successfully, they never expain why John Lewis manages to be successful. Or why the mutuals only went bust when they tried to act like standard banks. There clearly are other ways of doing successful businesd.

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
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A multi-site study, unpublished yet as far as I know (I know two of the contracted researchers), was looking at working low-income families*. What they found is that the consumer goods were not really what most of us might recommend: e.g., prepared food meals where the concerns are salt, fat sources and overall nutrition, and electronics. They also found that the income meant less visits to the food bank.

Further, they found that the worst nourished children were the latch-key kids whose lower income two or one parent had the adult(s) leave early for work, with the kids getting their own breakfasts (or not), with the same holding true for other meals. They also had issues with homework and classroom conduct. Interventions such as school milk programs and hot lunches were somewhat effective in improving things. Which my suspicious mind says is why the project data has not been released: a level of gov't would have to fund it. -- which leads me to believe that we really suck as a society. Instead we're getting a new half-billion dollar hospital for children, with all sorts of ground breaking, ribbon cutting and corporate execs talking about how good it feels to "give back" to the community.


*(low income families is the general term used here it seems instead of working poor; with the other term being 'living in poverty')

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hatless

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quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Even if you dropped that money straight into the pockets of the 70000 poorest people each year (4k a pop) it would pay huge dividends in terms of economic growth. Money spent tends to go around the economy a lot faster than money tied up in savings or investments. You'd make those people better off and improve the economy at the same time.

Really?

All we need is some super rich Obama supporter to pony up $3.5 billion for a 12 year experiment.

We don't need an experiment, because it's been shown to be true. All we need is the will to do it.
Instead, in the UK, we responded to the recession with £375 billion of government spending, but all in the form of quantitative easing. It has mostly been swallowed by the banks and is not circulating.

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Mere Nick
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quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
The very rich pay less tax per dollar of income than the poor and the middle class. Part of this is due to some notion that enough tax is enough.

Not when it comes to the federal income tax.
There's more to tax than (federal) income tax. Indirect taxes are regressive, ie, the more you earn, the less you pay as a proportion of income.

Also, wealth itself is only taxed on transfer and, armed with a competent accountant, a lot of tax liability can be avoided, thanks to a tax system made by and for the rich.

Of course there is more tax than just federal income tax. However, with what was tossed out at the SOTU, that's all that seems worth discussing, right now.
That might be all you want to discuss, but it isn't all that is relevant. The class war is fought on many fronts.
Since the op is about Obama, then it is about the federal income tax.

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Delmar O'Donnell

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