Obama's attempts at fomenting a Class War

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Cigarettes and gasoline are different things, and taxed differently.

Wages, corporate profits, and capital gains are also different things and taxed differently.

They're all different things, and taxed differently. It's silly to pick two of them, and say "that's a double tax"!

Sorry, again "that dog won't hunt" (Willie Clinton). You can't compare consumables to stocks.

[TheMercenary]

I wonder what students would think about redistributing their GPA....

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Sorry, again "that dog won't hunt" (Willie Clinton). You can't compare consumables to stocks.

That's a meaningless claim. They can be compared in many ways. One, for example, is that they are both taxed.

They can also be contrasted: They are taxed in different ways.

But more relevantly, wage income and investment income can be compared and contrasted in the same way. They are also both taxed, and taxed in different ways.

Buying investments and buying products (and, heck, buying products as investments and buying investment products) are all things you can do with your money. They, and the various ways of getting the money to do them with, are all taxable, and all handled in different ways. Picking one pair and calling them a "double tax" is silly and arbitrary.



And what were you referring to here?

Even if I put into stock and it earns zero, when I pull it out it is taxed a second time.

[tw]

After almost ten years of welfare to the rich, we have what history says is supposed to happen. Job losses. Ten years of George Jr economics has created job losses that were predicted here almost ten years ago. So what do our wacko extremists want to do? Continue the same voodoo economics that have destroyed so many jobs and created the worst recession in over 70 years.

We have job losses because we have enriched the richest in America while everyone else has seen their income drop by at least 2%. Only wackos would recommend more of the same. But then many know more welfare to the rich is good because the propaganda machine says so.

And so extremists invent a new expression to deflect attention from the real problem. Too must welfare for the rich is causing hardship on all others including those who actually create jobs. Class warfare is just another example of brainwashing by soundbyte.

[DanaC]

A Guardian piece on 'The Truth about Class War in America' is very interesting on this.

Republicans claim, in Orwellian fashion, that Obama's millionaire tax is 'class war'. The reality is that the super-rich won the war


Neither logic nor evidence supports either claim. The charge of class war is particularly obtuse. Consider simply these two facts. First, at the end of the second world war, for every dollar Washington raised in taxes on individuals, it raised $1.50 in taxes on business profits. Today, that ratio is very different: for every dollar Washington gets in taxes on individuals, it takes 25 cents in taxes on business. In short, the last half century has seen a massive shift of the burden of federal taxation off business and onto individuals.

Second, across those 50 years, the actual shift that occurred was the opposite of the much more modest reversal proposed this week by President Obama; over the same period, the federal income tax rate on the richest individuals fell from 91% to the current 35%. Yet, Republicans and conservatives use the term "class war" for what Obama proposes – and never for what the last five decades have accomplished in shifting the tax burden from the rich and corporations to the working class.

The tax structure imposed by Washington on the US over the last half-century has seen a massive double shift of the burden of taxation: from corporations to individuals and from the richest individuals to everyone else. If the national debate wants seriously to use a term like "class war" to describe Washington's tax policies, then the reality is that the class war's winners have been corporations and the rich. Its losers – the rest of us – now want to reduce our losses modestly by small increases in taxes on the super-rich (but not, or not yet, on corporations).

To refer to this effort as if it had suddenly introduced class war into US politics is either dishonest or based on ignorance of what federal tax policies have actually been. Or perhaps, for conservatives, it is a convenient mixture of both.

The final irony of loose talk about class war is this: the Republican and conservative voices opposing all tax increases for corporations and the rich thereby provoke, as Buffett intimated and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg more explicitly warned last week, a renewal of class consciousness in the US. Then, Washington might learn what class war really is.

By Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts,

Ful article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...publicans-rich

[Trilby]

everyone: just say, "Merc, you are right. You've always been right. Every drip-drop of golden wisdom from your brain onto our cellar souls is brilliant and correct."

and then maybe he'll shuttup already.

[DanaC]

Nah. If we did that he'd swing to the left attack from the other side.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Nah. If we did that he'd swing to the left attack from the other side.

at least it would be a change. five, six posts all in a row spouting the same thing/POV? gets a bit weary.

oh, well. I ususally don't come to these parts anyhoo, but am feeling full of vinegar this morning. Must be the nice weather we're having.

eta: the simple truth is that some people's ideas and attitudes change and evolve over time and experience. Not merc. He's llike the Catholic Church in that respect. but, the quality of mercy is not, at least, strained in any way. Brevity remains the soul of wit.

[DanaC]

Whenever I hear one of the rightwing conservative pundits whine about how any attempt to redress some of the imbalances in the tax system constitutes an act of 'class war', I get a mental image of a large man kicking a little guy repeatedly and then when the little guy lands a blow, the large man cries assault.

[Spexxvet]

It's about time the middle class starts to fight back. We've been under attack since 1981.

[glatt]

The problem is that the rich (those making more than $250k) think that they are part of the middle class. Hell, even those making more than $100k are above the 85th percentile. They are rich too.

The median household income in the US is around $50k. That's the middle class. You get above $50k, and you are wealthier than most.

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

It's about time the middle class starts to fight back. We've been under attack since 1981.

AMEN, brother.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

I wonder what students would think about redistributing their GPA....

A cute little trap but horrible analogy. To make it closer to reality, we need to get rid of the GPA cap of 4.0 and weigh classes differently. For example, an "A" in Psychology 101 should only give you a 2.0 while a "C" in any MBA course deserves at least a 10.0. An "A" would basically have to be a 100.0, maybe even more! I mean, to weigh all the classes the same is basically communist.

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by Brianna

everyone: just say, "Merc, you are right. You've always been right. Every drip-drop of golden wisdom from your brain onto our cellar souls is brilliant and correct."

and then maybe he'll shuttup already.

I think that you're laboring under the misapprehension that there's a real person posting as TheMercenary, when it's actually a republican-controlled spambot.

Do a google search for "fomenting class warfare" and you'll see what I mean.

[infinite monkey]

That explains a lot. I never thought he'd come up with the word 'foment' on his own. It's to hard.

See what I did thar?

He's a robotoid.

Originally Posted by wiki

Perhaps the first mention of "robotoid" was in the Lost in Space episode War of the Robots which originally aired on February 9, 1966 and credits Robby the Robot as a "robotoid" and William Bramley and Ollie O'Toole as uncredited "robotoid voice" actors.[2] In the episode, the Lost in Space Robot says: It is more than a machine...it is a robotoid. The robot goes on to explain that as a robot, it is constrained by its programming, whereas the robotoid has the capability of making a choice.[3][4] The episode is described as: The family's robot is seemingly replaced when Will repairs a robotoid from an advanced civilization - until the new machine wreaks havoc by trying to take over the ship.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotoid