Posted on 09/20/2006 7:46:02 AM PDT by A. Pole
I can. I left to avoid the crackdown on opposition and on the trade unions.
Now, I ask, why don't you move to some Latin American country where they do not tolerate trade unions, meddling nuns and redistributionist ideas? You can find purer capitalism in other countries than USA.
Not necessarily. Rich people who vote Democratic may do so for reasons other than the economic ones. For example, they may associate Republicans with religion and soi-disant "homophobia". They may want to be invited to parties, they may want gain approval of their neighbors, and so on. Finally, rich people are usually more intelligent, which in itself is not a bad thing, however, some intelligence is required to fall for abstract foolish ideologies.
Most of us work hard to reach that point before retirement when we can no longer do productive work. Unfortunately, some of us will never reach that goal because we are taxed heavily to support people who refuse to lift a finger toward the same objective.
"Giving back to society" isn't a voluntary choice in this country. 50% of every dollar I earn is confiscated by politicians who have decided to "give back to society". Doing good deeds with my earnings and claiming credit for having done so.
Are you for inheritance/estate tax then? BTW, how the previous generations of Kennedies earned their wealth?
Technically it is if you consider it a tax, because like the gas tax, use of it takes a larger percentage of the income of the poor. Of course, in this case the use of an income-based progressive tax would be patently unfair.
This is one of the main arguments against the sales tax based Fair Tax, except the Fair Tax rebates the sales tax to everyone at a rate that the basic necessities of life effectively aren't taxed. It's neither progressive nor regressive, just fair (hence the name).
It also means that illegal aliens paying no tax on their illegal incomes now will be paying tax whenever they buy something. That's probably one reason why we'll never get the Fair Tax.
Using this definition, is it good for a nation to have a sizable class of permanently wealthy?
Yes.
True. In 1984 the educated class (Outer Party) was brainwashed. The poor Proles and ruling group (Inner Party) was not.
They have a common interest in perpetuating the welfare state: the lower fifth wants government checks - the upper fifth wants cheap insurance against another French revolution. ;)
In other words, you wanted to make a better life for yourself and have increased economic opportunity. Now all the sudden that you are here, that's a bad thing.
"Now, I ask, why don't you move to some Latin American country where they do not tolerate trade unions, meddling nuns and redistributionist ideas?"
Cuz I don't know the language and I can make more money here. Although I may retire abroad, we'll just have to see what pans out when the time comes.
Hopefully I won't have a "meddling nun" to deal with. I never got along well with the whole guilt for making a dime more than someone else thingy.
You could be right. But so far nobody here tried to defend the idea of permanent UNEARNED wealth. They are talk how poor and rich DESERVE what they get.
It would be interesting to see the arguments and if the apply to the inherited aristocracy of old.
Does Paris Hilton "deserve" her wealth more than the descendants of brave knights?
You're partly right. The big issue for Ford was that it took a couple of months to train a worker for the line, and the line was, well, a grind. Workers would get sick of it and quit, taking all those months of training with them when they went across town to GM. The $5 a day wage was what they figured it was worth to keep those employees from leaving. The rest was just spin that Ford was happy to encourage, although the adulation went to his head and he began to think of himself as some kind of patriarch, leading to the bad Ford days of the 1930s, with his own system of secret police, spies, informers, beatings and so on.
Suppose I want to build myself a house but I don't own the tool to do so. Suppose you have the tools and rent them to me. Did you contibute to the building of the house?
I see where you're coming from, but the ratio between the income growth quoted for the top 1% and the bottom 20% is over 19 to one, and I doubt that rich households have 19 times as many people as poor households.
Wrong. I was well off in Poland and I would be better off if I did not get involved in opposition/trade unions and did not emigrate.
If I "wanted to make a better life for [my]self", I would have supported the regime and after the change of regime I would repaint myself as a free market democrat. Many did so and they are very well off today.
Here's the more appropriate question: Should Paris Hilton have her wealth forcibly taken by the state and redistributed?
Define UNEARNED. Does that include inheritance, dividends, speculating in the stock market (which of these?) or something else (if so, what?)
It should be taxed at the time of inheritance and after. She can "enjoy" her wealth only because there is a society and working people who sustain her wealth in existence.
You are looking at it from a wrong perspective. The man who made the original Hilton fortune worked in the large part to make his children and granchildren comfortable (like any normal person.)
So the question should be, did he deserve to pass his wealth to his descendants as was surely his intention? And the answer is yes.
Oh
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