Don't tell me that the government shouldn't redistribute rich people's wealth...

[MrScorpio]

With a MODEST raise on the marginal tax rates.

My great uncle, Joe Louis, was once the richest black man in America.

Here he is with my Great grandmother at one of the several houses that he bought for our family.



Unfortunately, his wealth was lost.

Although he was much too generous with his money and he made several bad business deals, it was a witch hunt by the IRS, backed up with some of the highest marginal tax rates in this country's history, that did him in.

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php
(Check out those rates during the 1940s-1950s when my Great Uncle Joe was getting harassed)

So wingers, teabaggers, fiscal conservatives, anti-socialists and generally greedy assholes, DON'T TELL ME that the rich shouldn't have to pay their fair share after all these years. I know that that "cut the tax", supply sider bullshit is nothing more than that...BULLSHIT.

The rich have been living far too high off the fat of the land for far too much and for far too long... And all of us have paid for it.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. I believe it was Gore Vidal who said "If the poor knew how much

fun the rich were having, they would rise up and eat them."

[kestrel91316]

3. I've been calling for a little of THIS:

for quite some time.

Actually it wouldn't take much. Just one or two, to set an example. Then they would be BEGGING for the right to pay higher taxes.

[FiveGoodMen]

39. (first it says error: your post didn't work, then there it is twice)

[FiveGoodMen]

40. +75,000,000

(for that 25% that continues to fuck up everything)

[Echo In Light]

23. +2

[Taverner]

2. 100% Agree. I'm ready to go Mugabe on some of these folks...

Specifically the Bush family...

[Jeramy]

5. Are you actually...

advocating putting someone to death based on income?

The market will only support high salaries as long as people are willing to pay ridiculous amount for these services. When you leave it alone the market is self correcting.

[unpossibles]

7. bullshit

show me one self-correcting market from a real life example.

[Taverner]

8. No - just taking property from those who aren't using correctly

Granted, Mugabe did it and it was a mass failure, turning the breadbasket of Africa into dust.

But he went race-based and psycho. I'm just saying a lot of weath redistribution would not be a bad thing.

[MrScorpio]

12. America doesn't work like that, fella

There is no free market.

It's all gamed for crony capitalism...

You have to live in the real world in order to notice this.

[JuniperLea]

17. Exactly... and if any of that crap really worked...

We wouldn't be in the mess we're in right now!

Thanks for the OP, btw... If your uncle had been white... well, I suppose I don't have to tell you that, do I?

[JuniperLea]

14. Bullshit...

I think you are in the wrong place... "the market is self-correcting" is the same bullshit the GOP has been spouting for decades... it doesn't work. Look at us now... we are in this mess because of asswipe thinking like this.

[Rex]

15. The market is self correcting? What a load of bullshit.

Explain 2008.

[DireStrike]

24. 2008 is the correction

Don't you know what a market correction is? It's when the follies of the people running the system lead to a complete failure. Families are destroyed, people die and have to give up everything they have, but most importantly STOCK PORTFOLIO PRICES DROP FOR A TIME.

But eventually "things" return to normal. That is the "correction" part. Worry not, the stock prices will rise again.

[Rex]

36. Well since you put it like that, I guess I am wrong.

[Jeramy]

29. Um..

"Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in August suggests that economic activity has picked up following its severe downturn. Conditions in financial markets have improved further, and activity in the housing sector has increased. Household spending seems to be stabilizing, but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales."

from here. http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary...

That appears to be market correction to me.

[MrScorpio]

30. Dude, you can't tell the diff between a self correction and direct intervention

We had a stimulus package, remember?

[Rex]

33. Wrong.

[DireStrike]

21. That is not true

The market will support high salaries as long as the rich continue to find new ways to steal from people, and remain out of the public eye. It's very easy when the government keeps removing protection from the poor and tilting the scales in their favor.

[handmade34]

31. are you serious?

"When you leave it alone the market is self correcting" not true, never true when the real world is involved

[HamdenRice]

4. I don't think the government should redistribute income through income taxes

But that's because I think the "market" for wages and salaries is ludicrously artificial in the first place.

We shouldn't have to tax high income earners because they shouldn't be making high incomes in the first place. Most of those very, very high incomes are a form of legalized theft, in which a corporate CEO hires dependent "consultants" to tell him what his salary should be.

No investment banker has ever done anything to merit a salary of over $1 million per year (if that).

Once you legitimate the salary structure, then when you say you are going to tax it to redistribute it, you get a certain category of low paid, but very stupid people to sympathize with the person whose income is being "taken" in taxes.

That said, if we are stuck with this ludicrous income structure, then those high incomes need to be taxed at very high marginal rates.

[unblock]

25. i disagree about the investment bank comment, though only because of how things are structured

i agree with your general take on things. the proposed fixed are only necessary because things are screwed up in the first place.

an investment banker, a ceo or cfo of a big corporation can merit millions or more per year, because they make decisions and accomplish things that affect many, many people and billions of dollars. the difference between good decisions and bad decisions means far more than the few millions earned by the person make those calls.

what's screwed up in that model is that that kind of crazy leverage is entrusted to one or two people. we just take for granted the idea that there should be ONE person in charge of an entire multinational megacorporation. well, if you want your power and control that concentrated, it makes sense to compensate that person with a giant paycheck. but a far more sensible model would be to distribute your power and control, introducing checks and balances and controls. you could drastically reduce the risk and severity of any fraud or of screwups or an external surprise sinking the whole company. the investment banker earns his keep by advising well one ceo and one cfo, but only because there's such crazy concentration of power and wealth around. spread things around more prudently and the investment banker wouldn't have such an opportunity to earn crazy money.

but you'd have to give up that ability for one person to move mountains and negotiate a merger or sale of the entire enterprise on the golf course and the way things are set up, there's too much money to be made doing that sort of thing.

[Jeramy]

26. Sorry

responded to the wrong one.

[DireStrike]

28. Thats an excellent point.

If the market worked, fixes wouldn't be necessary.

[handmade34]

37. devil's advocate...

no maximum wage but high taxes (with needed regulation and appropriate rules) can provide money to invest for growth and development in the private sector but still control an individual's excessive wealth??

[unpossibles]

6. yeah, I have a hard time feeling too sorry for someone who is rich

complaining about some extra taxes.

Frankly, while I recognize the value hard work, determination, and good ideas can play in becoming successful, I also know that luck, being born into the right situation, timing, and most importantly SOCIETY have a role to play in it as well.

I just had a lengthy facebook argument with a Libertarian friend who refuses to think that government spending and the benefits we get from that can be good. I finally got him to admit that his family is in the Air Force, thus the government paid for him being able to become middle class and go to college, and then also that he had several government grants and scholarships, as well as other direct benefits! WTF? Really? It started simply because I had posted a link to http://www.governmentisgood.com as a way to discuss that many effects of taxation and government directly benefit us every hour of every day, but are forgotten, and that many/most of those benefits could not be had at the same price from private industry. I was just trying to start a dialog/conversation about this in general, and was somewhat surprised that he chimed in on that, knowing his background.

[MrScorpio]

9. Let me tell you about what I took from my 7 1/2 years of working at the Pentagon

We spend WAAAAAY too much money funding the Pentagon.

I think cutting the budget down to a third of its current size is a step in the right direction.

One good thing is that the troops get great health care... But it's that funding of our bloated Military Congressional Industrial Complex that has America on the road to ruin, fer-sher.

[mediaman007]

18. They do get to keep 50 cents on the dollar. Taxes don't everything.

You would think that raising the rate would make them...poor. They can pay a rate of 50% and still have lots of money!

A hell of a lot of people have to live on a lot less!

And while we're at it, enough of the wiggle room that we give to corporations.

[unpossibles]

27. right!

I should be so lucky to have the "burden" of such a high tax rate. I won't even mention the myriad schemes and scams to have some untaxed income....

[handmade34]

34. it is amazing

how people that have wealth (or that complain that gov't is too controlling) conveniently forgot or diminish how they have benefitted from the gov't(society as a whole) and/or family money and persuasion. Public works, state/federal benefits, military, family money, gov't grants, EPA, FDA, rules and regulations that benefit all, etc... ...could go on and on.

[JVS]

10. K&R

[paulsby]

11. i'll tell you

fair share? sure.

confiscatory rates in the 50%+ range? hell no.

[Beer on a stick]

13. Sorry, but what does Joe Louis being your uncle have to do with the stated topic?

[MrScorpio]

19. A comparison of marginal tax rates

They soaked him in his day, but in our day the rich are getting off scot free.

The funny thing is that the economy grew like gangbusters when those rates were so high.


The rates are incidentals... The IRS could have made some deals for payment of back taxes... Instead, they went on a witch hunt.

These are two different stories, I admit.

[handmade34]

32. I love your stories!!

[One_Life_To_Give]

16. That table doesn't tell us much, exept what Rockefellers paid.

$400,000 per year in 1963 was the minimum income to put one into the top bracket. Enough money to buy maybe 200 Cars? 10 houses?
If we are talking about putting the same rate only on incomes of atleast $4Million that would be good. Less than 1% of US Households have such an income although they represent some 50% of the income total of the top 1%.

What would be more meaningfull would be the historic effective tax rates on the 60, 80, 90, 95, 99, 99.9 percentiles over the same time period.

[MrScorpio]

20. My great uncle's purses put him well into the brackets for the 40s and 50s

That's why I used that graph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis#Taxes_and_financ...

[Deja Q]

22. K&R

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

35. My Dad always says

your Great Uncle Joe was the best boxer ever. My Dad was a boy in Detroit in the 30's and 40's.............

[WVRICK13]

38. Casual Cruelty Is A Foreign Concept To Americans

I went to Canada for a job interview in 2004 because I was so sick about the election. While there I had the good fortune to spend time with a member of Parliament who also owns a political tee shit company. He gave me one as a gift and it came with a card so less in tune folks can understand the slogans. The back of the shirts asks, "What Is Casual Cruelty?" The front states, "What You Think of Me." It took my poor American brain a while to adjust to such deep political thought. Every time any of us buys fast food, patronizes a convenience store, shops at WalMart, or any other store that pays low wages and offer no employee benefits; or when we buy products produced by low paid labor we are taking advantage of the workers. We are, in fact, living our lives of relative luxury (compared to those in the lowest income levels) because of the low paid, low benefits workers subsidizing our life styles. Our purchases amount to Casual Cruelty. In the US I am a rabid liberal, in Canada I was known as that moderate conservative. Kind of sobering for me.