First of all, you really don’t know how many SS or Medicare recipients really need it. Nor do you really know how many recipients of any kind of governmental aid really need it.
But that really isn’t the point is it? Or is it? If, as seems likely, additionally taxing that 1% (assuming they are reachable at all) will serve no useful economic function and might even be harmful, why should we do it? Because we hate them and want to harm them? Because we want to stick our finger in their eye, just to do it?
Some people think it is unfair that some people pay zero income tax. But is that really any less fair than Warren Buffett avoiding capital gains tax by giving away his stock? I mean how do we tell what is fair or unfair?
And who decides what is enough money? Sounds like class envy to me. If people are hard-working enough and inventive enough to use the good mind that the Lord gave them to enrich himself, he, and he alone, should have the power to spend his money as he sees fit. We do know that when taxes are raised, contributions to charity are reduced. And we also know that taxing as in the Buffet Rule will pay the government bill for ONE day. Cleaning up the waste, fraud and abuse, in which we have very recent examples, would do far more to enrich the treasury than the Buffet Rule. But then that does not feed the minds of those who are more and more depending on the government to take care of them.
And that StinkCat IS the issue…WHO says what is fair or unfair? It all depends on whose ox is being gored doesn’t it? Please re-read Ridgerunner’s amazing post which addresses many of these issues.
Actually, I think a reasonable person can look at a situation and see that something is unfair even when his ox is not being gored. For example, I benefit from a loophole that is not available to most taxpayers. Because of my job, which is teaching at a state university, I can contribute to both a 403b and a 457 plan and put up to $17k in each. In other words, because of an arbitrary difference between my job and most people’s and can deduct up to twice as much for retirement savings. Is that fair? I cannot see how such a silly thing could be fair, even though it benefits me.
But there is no way you can establish that your version of unfairness is morally superior to the person who claims that it is unfair that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Of course, many of the people who dodge taxes completely are older people, who might actually have to pay taxes if we forced them to take responsibility for their own health care and retirement spending.
It is not just democrats who are guilty of this kind of thinking. How many republicans get government benefits as well? I know many republicans who receive medicare and never think of it as wasteful government spending.
My point on Buffetts stock giving is that if let anyone claim anything is unfair then we cannot criticize anyone else for criticizing something as unfair.
Your sure you live in the city of Detroit? If so, you should already be well versed in “our troubles”. Racism caused a wedge between the city of Detroit, and the more afluent suburbs. When whites left, their goal was sealing Detroits fate. Before long, whites were afraid to go to Detroit. Blacks who managed to find jobs in the suburbs. Were met with hostility. Their employers treated them badly. Then, they were glared at in any local store they walked into. This has done irreparable harm to our region. His term over, Jerome Cavanaugh was replaced By Roman Gribbs. Then Coleman Young held the office for 20 years. Sadly, he followed James Curley’s example of leadership. US-vs-THEM.
Which I think is a good point when setting policy and laws you never use the word fair. So let’s drop fair from the discussion and talk from first principles like everyone equal before the law and government takings for the “common good.” I am sick to death of the greed of the US government masked as “fair share.”
Which is why racisim sealed Detroits fate; the racism of those left behind. So the good people of Detroit made there grave let them live in it.
A lot of words there. I agree that the rules that govern SSI, and Medicaid should be revised. I liked that the Cash for Clunkers money was taxed. I didn’t like that it detroyed a lot of used cars that had many useful years ahead of them. I feel sorry for any person who took advantage of the program and bought a Hyundai. Then foolishly parked within range of my Trucks heavy doors.
I think we should try to fix problems.
I find it amazing that people want to base national economic policy on a work of fiction.
You are right again, it is Detroit’s problem. That what freedom and self-reliance means they make their own bed they get to lay in it.I think we should try to fix problems.
You are ambiguous here. Do you mean that the goal of the people leaving was to somehow force Detroit into a particular fate?
And Yasar Arafat has a nobel prize also.
Barack Obama “won” a peace prize shortly after escalating one war and while continuing to fight another.
I wasn’t the one who brought up the nobel prize, some poster asked for the name of an American nobel prize winner who advocated income redistribution. While I disagree with both of their politics, I think both the Paul’s were good economists. Krugman was much better in his younger days before he started ranting about republicans.