This is what class warfare looks like.

Do you see a pattern?

Increasing income disparity in the US puts us worse than or on par with much of Latin America in that category.

A former economic advisor to George W. Bush and John McCain is advocating lowering the minimum wage.

Someone making $100 million per year pays a tax rate just two points higher than someone making $175,000 per year.

Wall Street bonuses are expected to rise this year.

Businesses with rising profits are not hiring more workers.

CEOs who lay off more workers get paid more.

Senator David Vitter represents a state where the average household income is $43,635, but he looks out at an audience and tells them that a plan to repeal a tax cut for households making more than $250,000 per year would affect “virtually everybody in this audience.”

Senator Jon Kyl is fighting to protect tax cuts to the wealthiest. He also fought to block an extension of unemployment benefits to struggling families in an attempt to get an estate tax bill that would benefit…you guessed it, the very wealthiest families.

55% of all adults in the workforce say that since the recession began they have been unemployed, had their pay cut or their hours reduced, or become involuntary part-time workers.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says jobless workers don’t go back to work because of unemployment benefits.

JPMorgan Chase pretty much agrees with DeLay.

The pattern I see is working people struggling more and more, wealthy people having more and more, and Republican politicians and Wall Street allied to get more and more from working people and give more and more to wealthy ones.

And they like to say that anyone asking for a living wage, or to close a tax loophole for billionaires, is engaging in class warfare. What they really mean is, that opposes their own war on working people.

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From www.workingamerica.org/blog/2010/09/16/this-is-what-class-warfare-looks-like/

And yet there are still people who will defend big business, CEOs and other corporate entities, even though they don't belong to that class. 

I'm sure most of us posting here are part of the middle class, how can you not be for more taxes on the rich and big business when you see what they are doing to our economy?  Why should we foot the bill for them when they turn around and send jobs overseas, pollute our air, waterways and numerous other crimes?

It's laughable that people think Obama is a socialist.  Get a fuckin' clue.  And stop using the term "socialist", you racist *************.

For those who don't want to click the links:

• Someone making $100 million per year pays a tax rate just two points higher than someone making $175,000 per year.

Paying for It

So, you’re asking, how do we pay for bridges and fire fighters and teachers and trains and health care for kids and sewers that don’t overflow all the time, without putting an unbearable tax burden on middle-class families or small businesses?

The answer is not hard and it’s been laid out a lot of times by a lot of people. Here’s James Surowiecki in the New Yorker:

Between 2002 and 2007, for instance, the bottom ninety-nine per cent of incomes grew 1.3 per cent a year in real terms—while the incomes of the top one per cent grew ten per cent a year. That one per cent accounted for two-thirds of all income growth in those years. People in the ninety-fifth to the ninety-ninth percentiles of income have represented a fairly constant share of the national income for twenty-five years now. But in that period the top one per cent has seen its share of national income double; in 2007, it captured twenty-three per cent of the nation’s total income. Even within the top one per cent, income is getting more concentrated: the top 0.1 per cent of earners have seen their share of national income triple over the same period. All by themselves, they now earn as much as the bottom hundred and twenty million people. So at the same time that the rich have been pulling away from the middle class, the very rich have been pulling away from the pretty rich, and the very, very rich have been pulling away from the very rich.

The current debate over taxes takes none of this into account. At the moment, we have a system of tax brackets well suited to nineteenth-century New Zealand. Our system sets the top bracket at three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, with a tax rate of thirty-five per cent. (People in the second-highest bracket, starting at a hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars for individuals, pay thirty-three per cent.) This means that someone making two hundred thousand dollars a year and someone making two hundred million dollars a year pay at similar tax rates. LeBron James and LeBron James’s dentist: same difference.

This makes no sense—there’s a yawning chasm between the professional and the plutocratic classes, and the tax system should reflect that. A better tax system would have more brackets, so that the super-rich pay higher rates. (The most obvious bracket to add would be a higher rate at a million dollars a year, but there’s no reason to stop there.) This would make the system fairer, since it would reflect the real stratification among high-income earners. A few extra brackets at the top could also bring in tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue.

Not to mention the fun of watching Republicans try to pretend they were somehow sticking up for the little guy by opposing added taxes on multimillionaires.

I have an idea.

Lets stop spending more than we take in.

Then we can use the savings in interest to fund infrastructure.

How about we get the rich off welfare and make them pay a higher tax rate; cut our military spending  by about 75% - that should be more than enough to rebuild our infrastructure, provide housing, education and health care for us.

There needs to be a flat tax rate...the fact that you pay a higher percentage of taxes with the more money you make is ridiculous.  If you make a boatload of money under a flat tax rate, you're still going to be paying a lot more in taxes than people at lower incomes, but you'll be paying at the same rate/percentage which not only makes sense, but is incredibly fair.

 A flat tax rate is another stupid idea floated out there by people who have been cowed by the corporate media into thinking that over-taxing the rich will hurt the economy.

Or...a flat tax rate could be an idea favored by people that think that everyone should be treated equally by the law.  The taxes you pay provide the funding for the government services we all enjoy.  It's not like there are more post offices or roads available for the people who pay more in taxes. 

I realize that taxing people with higher incomes is very much in vogue right now and appeals to the populist instinct in people, but if you advocate that position you are essentially saying that simply by virtue of having a lot of income a rich person is obligated to pay for YOUR healthcare, YOUR roads, YOUR police, and everything else the government provides.  

While we might not like the fact that other people have a lot more money than us (because of intellect, or attitude, or talent, or just being lucky enough to be born rich) that jealosy is not sufficient to make a claim on someone else's property. 

Plus, how much money could the government save if the IRS didn't have to administer a set of regulations that are larger than War and Peace?  A dramatically simplified tax code would pay immediate dividends that could be pushed back into other government programs. 

Posted by jiml60 on 9/19/2010 10:06:00 AM (view original):
How about we get the rich off welfare and make them pay a higher tax rate; cut our military spending  by about 75% - that should be more than enough to rebuild our infrastructure, provide housing, education and health care for us.

1 This isnt about taxing more, it is about reducing the size of government.

2 We need a military to protect our interests in the world. We spend about the same as most major nations in the world, as a percentage of GDP.

More Milton Friedman than Rand, but I would never take that as an insult.

So respond to this.

1 Our Government spending rose by leaps and bounds for the 40+ years that the Democrats controlled the House.
2 Our military spends the same as most nations with any kind of global interests.
3 We have never cut spending ever. We have raised taxes all the time.

Given these facts is expanding the role of government and raising taxes and gutting the Military a good idea?

Comparing the military budget to the GDP tells you how large a burden such spending puts on the US economy, but it tells you nothing about the burden it puts on U.S. taxpayers.  What happens when the economy goes in the crapper, do you think that military spending will take a cut?  Historically no, and you can be sure it's not going to start now.  The US spends more on their military than the next 16 nations combined.

As for reducing government, Republicans like to talk the talk but don't walk the walk.