He's busted!!! There ya go.....Socialism plain and simple.
Not what our country has been about so why are we even thinking of voting this guy in!
Bzzt, wrong. Capitalism - saved by socialism since 1932.
I disagree. Social Security something I d like to see done away with, and should not have been there in the first place. Pyramid schemes are illegal why is this one ok?
I wouldn't say he is busted though... he has always been a socialist and hasn't ever done a good job hiding it.
I don't think anyone will take notice of this or care. Its gotten to the point where Obama could probably deliver 'Totaler Krieg' to thunderous applause.
The only thing about this that is news - is that he actually said it. Which does make his integrity go up in my eyes.
I agree. And further, Capitalism has thrived IN SPITE of some socialistic programs. Those policies turned a recession into a decade long depression. One might argue that imperialism (WWII) had more to do with saving capitalism than did any of the social programs - and be closer to the truth (It was not imperialism, but at least it got us out of the depression).
I wish they would just go to a flat tax, income redistribution is for the birds. To put it in perspective this is how it works in simple terms:
An unemployed guy goes into McDonald's and the store pays him .50 to have a big Mac. A guy that has a moderate paying job is charged $4 for his Big Mac, and a rich guy is charged $19.99 for his Big Mac. Can the rich guy afford it? Sure, but that doesn't make it fair. Where is the incentive for the middle-class or the rich guy to even go to McDonald's? The poor guy will go every day and eat cause they are encouraging him to do so, heck he's bringing the whole family for the handout. Where is the incentive to do better? Who will keep subsidizing McDonald's when the rich and middle class don't want to eat their anymore?
This is the path we are heading down. But what happens when the far-left Democrats (i.e. Socialists) kill the golden goose? Who pays then. Reminds me of the line from "An American Carol"..."I love America that's why we need to destroy it". The democrats will see a day in the future when they can't give out the huge amount of entitlements anymore, then they will face the angry mob, because it's all about what have you done for me lately.
A flat tax isn't fair. The main justification for it is that the efficiency savings via it's simplicity outweigh the cost in 'fairness'. If you're poor, a far higher proportion of your income is being spent on necessities than if you're rich. Therefore, you have much less income that can go towards taxes. Why should you be taxed on your total income at the same rate as someone who is rich? Wouldn't fair mean taxing people on their ability to pay? So the poor person gets taxed based on their income after necessities, at the same rate as the rich person, for example (e.g. if hypothetically you needed $10k for necessities, and had on person on $15k, and another on $250k, it wouldn't be fair to tax them both at 40%, because while the rich person would still have $140k to spend, the poor person would be sitting on -$1k. That's before you even get into the main redistribution arguments of it being more desirable to reduce relative income inequality if there will be a minimal cost to total income (arising from the increased taxes on the rich).
Providing you don't allow a poverty trap to arise (where you earn less via work than on benefits), then you will typically be able to do better by working harder. You might not gain as much for each extra hour worked due to a tax rise (meaning you don't work as much due to valuing leisure the same as before and hence choosing that over the extra hour of work instead), but you still have some incentive to 'do better'.
Sounds like a suitable incentive to become rich(er) to me. What is inherently wrong with an economic system that rewards hard work and success?
What, making someone starve/go without a home(/insert other necessity here), so that they try and work more? What if they're already working as much as they can (without say damaging their health by working non-stop+getting little to no sleep)? How does it help them to have an incentive to become richer if they can't, and are forced into absolute property? That's the problem with such a fixed rate of tax, because most people (I'd hope) would see the government as having a duty of care to it's people such that if they are working as hard as they are physically capable of, they should be able to obtain the basic necessities of life. That's before you consider all the other impacts of such a scenario - that worker isn't able to obtain all the necessities by working, so what do they do? Well, they might turn to crime, and steal from others to try and survive. Even better, if they do that, and are arrested, they get sent to a jail where chances are they'd be provided with such necessities, so you then risk creating an incentive for people to get into jail, not earn any money(+cause damage to get in there), and a huge bill to see to them, meaning it costs society more than if they'd just given a small tax break. You have the issue of it being inherantly unfair to have a regressive tax which when looking at disposable incomes is what such a flat rate tax would be (i.e. it taxes the poor disproportionately more than the rich, rather than both equally). You then have other politicial considerations - the poor will always outnumber the rich (that is, 50% of wealth in any country will be held by less than 50% of it's population). Meanwhile, the poor have a vote. So, they're going to want to vote for the politician that will make life best for them typically. If one politician proposes taxing them below the poverty line, and another one proposes allowing them to survive with necessities, who do you think they'll vote for? That then means the politician advocating such an extreme flat tax approach has to try and persuade all the remaining people to vote for them, which will be a tough job to do if you don't have efficiency savings resulting in a significant boost to total income in the economy (which would thus increase the number of people made better off by the proposal), and if the tax is fundamentally unfair (such that many of the richer people won't agree with it even if they benefit from an increase in income).
It already does! Even if you had taxes on the rich at 90%, you'd still have an economic system that rewards hard work+success (since you'd get 10% of the reward). Also referring back to the previous example extreme, what is wrong with rewarding someone for working as much as they can by ensuring they can obtain all the necessities.
Why should the government care what what you spend your money on? Using a flat tax the rich will pay more because they make more. I suppose it is fair to you that between 30 and 40% pay no federal taxes at all, and may even get money back? How fair is that? If a flat tax is 10% a person pays $2000, if he makes $200,000 then his tax is $20,000. Your just not happy that the person who makes $200,000 had the initiative to earn that much. Maybe this would make you happy, everyone in the US cannot be paid more than $10 an hour. From the president down to ditch diggers, lawyers, doctors, and politicians. Would that be great for our little socialist world. Then we'll see what happens to ingenuity and motivation for the sake of fairness via redistribution of wealth.
Because it is popular, same as to why recreational drugs like alcohol and tabacco are legal...
Like all pyramid schemes, this one doesn't actually WORK... this is why it is on the verge of total collapse.
Potentially very fair, if they are unable to survive with the most basic of necessities without that being the case. Of course I expect the benefits system is actually more generous than what I'm supporting since it would likely need to be for the figure to be as high as 30-40%, but yes, it could be fair.
Assuming you meant a person on 20k and 200k paying 10% tax there; what if it was a 50% tax, and paying it caused the person on 20k to cut back on necessities, and die after working just a few years? That's fair under your reasoning? What if they can only earn 20k because they were fighting for their country, and got injured/tortured such that they can only work certain jobs for certain hours. Is it fair that they get abandoned so that rich person can have a little bit more luxury? In fact, since you alluded to it in your post, would it be fairer if they both paid $10k in taxes, if that's roughly what the state provision costs per person (for public services, running of government, and the like)? I mean who cares if $10k for that poor person is worth as much to them as say $150k is worth to the rich person, right? It's only fair they pay exactly the same amount in taxes if they're both getting the same level of service for them!
Furthermore, it's the governments decision as to what tax regime to have, and the government is meant to be representing all the people in society, not just the super-rich. So they shouldn't be focusing on what's best for one tiny group of people (super-rich), but rather whats best for the country/society as a whole.
Yep, someone advocating a flat tax with an annual exemption and basic benefits scheme would clearly be happy with a near communist system . There aren't too many places where you can propose a fairly extreme right wing taxation policy and be branded a socialist/communist because of it, but this is one of them!
Aren't you the least bit curious how someone in the Unted States can't survive without the government? We're not talking a couple percent of people (i.e. the severely disabled or something). We're talking 38% of the adult population who pay no taxes.
On what basis can you honestly say that they can't survive without being given money that was taken by force from people who work?
Personally, I'd like to see a consumption tax instead of an income tax. We punish people for working which is ridiculous. We should be rewarding people for earning money and investing it. We should tax people when they spend it (a national sales tax for example).
i agree with that draginol... i actually went ahead and invented one, and then I was told it was already being promoted... it is called fairtax.org
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main
I'd go for that too, but I don't believe we'll see it anytime soon. The left doesn't want fair or equal, the deck has to be stacked. The fair tax would give those poor people, the ones that somehow can't survive without the government payout, the opportunity to cut back on new TV's, a case of beer or bottle of Henessey each week. Humm unless that is their priority of course. As a person from humble beginnings (not that things are so wonderful now), my patients for freeloaders is wearing thin.