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Phil's Liberal Rant of the Week - Taxes! 40 comments
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This post has 40 comments:
A. Look for a different job.
B. Further his education, if necessary, to qualify for a better job.
If he has to, he can get a (government-backed) student loan.
C. He could also opt for a part-time job for additional income.
D. Excel at his current position and get promoted.
Can it be done? Sure, you constantly read stories of people achieving success through diligence, hard work and (sometimes extreme) self-sacrifice.
Is it easy? No, (it really never has been) but it's doable. This guy is selling toaster ovens because that's his comfort level, it's what he settled for. Everyone is where they are because of the decisions they made along the way.
Yes, this remains the land of opportunity but you have to do your part. As Edison said - success is still 99% persperation.
You're a bigger idiot than the commenter above you (What? what?).
And that's saying something.
I dare you. I freakin' DARE you to post something resembling a basic bio here. As of Jan 23-2012, you have no bio, no nothing.
Don't you understand that selling toaster ovens at Worst Buy might BE what he has accomplished to that given random point in life?
How old is he? 20? 60?
What kind of family did he come from? Did his parents pay for him to go to college? If you think student loans can pay for college you're nuts (and ignorant). Did he have good health care growing up?
How do YOU know that he has "settled" for that, that he is "in hos comfort zone". dumbass.
His job is NOT his "comfort zone", necessarily. It is NOT what he has "settled for", necessarily. For all you know, he MIGHT BE IN COLLEGE taking 4 courses a quarter and working 25 hours a week and staying up until 3am every night studying.
He might have been hit by a car a year ago, spent 7 months in the hospital and physical therapy recovering and letting his bones grow back together, and it might take every fiber of his being just to GET to work every day.
The thing I find most disgusting about people like you is that, as they said about "Dubya", you're born on third base and think you hit a single, so to speak.
It's OK for you to sit in your plush surroundings and feel self congratulatory and smug about how great you are. But don't be so grotesque as to come here and criticize people who work for a living. One of those waiters might just drop a little strychnine in your espresso one of these days.
You might want to read the comment that I wrote under Phil's article on Jan 17-2012.
You just don't get it. There are not enough $80,000 jobs for everyone to have one. You might have one, you might have a $200,000 dollar job.
And that is totally, I mean TOTALLY the result of ONLY your own hard work and "choices" at "various points" through your life until now, right?
NO help from anyone of any kind, right? You graduated from high school, left your parents house, did not take anything with you, and that is what you "started with", right? Paid for all your own college and went straight to Goldman Sachs, and been there until you're now 60 years old, right? And everybody else should be able to do that too, since you did, so they are all lazy, right? right?
That scenario is MY history.
You wanna talk about hard work? Next time you're in my town stop by. We'll go out for a few days and we'll see who can work who under a table.
-aspiring_beginner
As to the job issue, let me clarify this part. My attitude is that there are jobs that need to be done in society. Your car needs to be washed, someone has to pick lettuce in a field for you, someone has to sew buttons on your shirt, someone has to pick up your trash and teach your children and someone has to go to Afghanistan and try to stop terrorists from building new camps where they train people to kill you. What I am saying is that yes – a person who puts in a full day of hard work in ANY job deserves some basic human decency from society. I’m sorry if I was not clear in my example of a guy working at Best Buy but it’s one of the 120M out of 140M jobs in this country that pays around 1 to 2x the minimum wage.
While it is true that for every plantation there can only be one Lord and one overseer and many, many slaves – even the slave owners provided their workers with food, clothing, shelter and medical care for them and their families – even the Egyptians allowed those who built the pyramids a day of rest and the right to have families and meet their basic human needs.
Not in America though – in America you can have a job that doesn’t pay you enough money to live. Doesn’t pay you enough to retire or get married or have children and then there are people who will blame the worker for not being able to provide for themselves or their families – EVEN if they work as hard as any other person does, just for lower wages.
That’s what I am talking about when I give an example of a man in Best Buy making $15 and hour. Does a woman who wakes up at 4am to start picking your tomatoes until dusk deserve to come home from her 12-hour day of work with less money than your secretary makes in two hours? Should she make less money in a month than you pay your company salesman in a day to play golf with clients? Should she make less money in a year than your accountant bills you for a week of helping your company avoid paying taxes?
You can pay people LESS and you can try to justify all sorts of elaborate formulas for determining what is fair on some relative basis but I am simply saying that ANYONE who works hard at a job deserves to earn enough money to support a family and it is the RESPONSIBILITY of society to make sure there is a balance there between rich and poor.
If there were not people buying $1M homes and eating $50 steaks and driving 10 mpg trucks to the grocery store – then it would not cost the man who works at Wal-Mart so much to live but it’s the very imbalances caused by the conspicuous consumption of the top 1% that drives up the costs of basic necessities for the bottom 99% and that is where the laissez-faire system falls apart – at the point at which your slave class can no longer support themselves.
We NEED those services and, unlike some Ayn Rand fantasy, they don’t need us – we may come up with the cool electronics or the great entertainment etc. but, as is proven by 5Bn people on this planet every single day – people can be born, go to school, get jobs, have families and be taken care of in their old age – all for less than $2,500 a year of per capita GDP.
WE AT THE TOP have created a society that makes it impossible IN OUR LITTLE PART OF THE WORLD for our workers to live without having a great deal more money than that. That makes it our responsibility to make sure we do pay them enough to live their lives with dignity and, if we can do that and still have some profits left over – then good for us. But, if the only way we can make our profits is to take away the basic human needs of others – then what kind of society is that?
TBTF's are now 30% bigger than pre-Lehman with executives bilking more $ than before. Corporations basically take away 'the basic human needs' when they off-shore production...to pump earnings for their stock valuations. State & Local gov'ts have gotten out of whack with expenditures v income - so the 'basic human need suffers' when austerity measures reduce public payrolls....at the middle-poor class level more than the upper bureaucrat level....
Solutions?
Gov't Leadership demonstrates the funding drain every election. Tough to see that changing anytime soon.
Corporate leaders demonstrate their greed daily with general admiration from MSM.
People need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps - but is the glass ceiling too think and they lose hope?
BTW - when I looked at your subscription rates I saw some heavy $ to read your daily posts. I'd pay $10-$15 month to have the opp to read in real-time. The 48 hour wait is reasonable - which I do.
thanks
Why is "'evolution" perceived to be necessarily good or right?
It doesn't really have anything to do with taxes. Evolution's "survival of the fittest" is not a moral imperative intended for sociology or economics or law, it is an observation about the natural world for explaining phenomena in biology (and to some extent sociology and psychology).
And who would want to live in a world like that? Is that the ideal we should be striving to? That the strongest should "survive" and everyone else can go to hell? (ignoring the fact that the strongest typically means the cruelest, the most-power hungry, the most evil people will seize and secure power and resources).
People should keep scientific concepts that they don't understand out of politics and economics....sorry one of my pet peeves.
But does all this mean that the general public should not be more scientifically educated? On the contrary! All it means is that scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc., to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess: and his political reactions would probably be somewhat less intelligent than those of an illiterate peasant who retained a few historical memories and a fairly sound aesthetic sense.
Clearly, scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, sceptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method — a method that can be used on any problem that one meets — and not simply piling up a lot of facts. Put it in those words, and the apologist of scientific education will usually agree. Press him further, ask him to particularize, and somehow it always turns out that scientific education means more attention to the sciences, in other words — more facts.
The idea that science means a way of looking at the world, and not simply a body of knowledge, is in practice strongly resisted. I think sheer professional jealousy is part of the reason for this. For if science is simply a method or an attitude, so that anyone whose thought-processes are sufficiently rational can in some sense be described as a scientist — what then becomes of the enormous prestige now enjoyed by the chemist, the physicist, etc. and his claim to be somehow wiser than the rest of us?
"If you're walkin 'round
think'n that the world
owes you something
'cause you're here
You goin' out
the world backwards
Like you did
when you first come here
I know my great-grandparents on my father's side came into this country just about penniless speaking only Russian. My great grandfather started his own business, he pushed a cart around the streets of Cincinnati buying and selling used merchandise. My great-great grandparents on my mothers side emigrated from Scotland and settled in Kentucky, becoming farmers (guaranteed living wage? Thats a laugh).
They all had one thing in common, a desire to better themselves and not to settle for what they started with. One of the pushcart vendor's sons became a doctor, the other successful insurance salesman. The doctor married my grandmother, who had left Kentucky, moved to Ohio and started her own beauty salon. (Interesting sidebar here, during the Depression most patients didn't have the money to pay their doctor bills but the women always had $1.25 to come in every week for a 'shampoo and set'. It was my grandmother's business that enabled them to get through). This spirit of entrepreneurship continued through generations. My mother had her own trucking company(!) and worked until she was 72. I've had my own businesses since 1971. For over 100 years this family has survived and prospered without a guaranteed living wage.
What's the point? Maybe you're right. The U.S. is not so much a
Land of Opportunity any more. Instead it's evolving into a "Land of Entitlement" where people think they're owed something just because they're here - and we will be worse for it.
extra mustard on the sk....ers
It could have been something, but it isn't. I am reneging my US citizenship, and not happily so. But enough is enough, this is corporate fascism script-written by Hollywood and the corporate press. Goodbye.
Harvardbiz - Pragmatism should motivate you to keep your U.S. citizenship and passport. Keep your options open, and good luck, wherever you go.
He has the right to work for those things! He has no intrinsic right to them without working for them!! I, and you, have NO obligation to give him those things, any more than others have the obligation to give them to us. Nor does he have the right to demand that we give them! We all must work for them! We have the freedom to pursue them, and the freedom to fail if we work insufficiently hard for them.
A guy working for minimum wage ($7.50/hr - $300/wk) can work his ass off for "those things" and you sure aren't going to give them to him are you? So, should no one do those jobs at all? I would like nothing better than for everyone earning less than the "average income" of $48,000 a year go on strike because only then would you understand how much you need those people to work for you.
Those jobs must be done, we need good people to work hard in positions that fill roles in society - do we not have an obligation to treat them with the same respect as someone filling another job that arbitrarily pays a higher salary?
Is it right for David Novak (YUM CEO) to make $30M a year when his average employee makes $20,000? Is he really worth 1,500 people? Is it possible that one day of David Novak's time has the value of 5 years worth of one of his employees? The whole company only has 53,000 employees and makes $1.2Bn in profits, even after paying Novac's salary, which is enough to give each employee a $22,641 bonus!
There is no equal opportunity for people to get jobs. Once a person is too poor for college - it's pretty much over for them and only 6% of students from low-income households earn a bachelor's degree vs 51.3% from high-income households. If you think that's a fair system then you are delusional.
collegemoneymakingidea.../
As for the government being the best way to run things, what a joke. You forget that the government serves at OUR pleasure- not the other way around. With no profit motive, there is no incentive for the gov't to do anything decently. Exhibit A is the setup of our federal reserve. Why do we even have it? Why not have money printed and managed by the treasury? Cut out the self dealers that only help their buds...
I lived in NYC/LI in the 60's/70's. I saw the "wonders" that government could produce. That's why I live in the Cincinnati area today. I hate to say it, but I see the same ossification now occurring here- unfunded grandiose mass transit schemes, pushes to move section 8 housing out of the inner city to suburban neighborhoods, tax breaks for favored groups, etc. Oh yeah, that's what got me started- your statement that the purpose of taxes is to set social agendas. WRONG! Taxes should ONLY be used to raise revenue. Anything beyond is more liberal claptrap. Oh yeah- I think I am owed a free/ severely discounted (say $2/month) subscription to your website. Why not? I know you make more money than I...
"Taxes should ONLY be used to raise revenue".
A government that can print its own money does not need taxes in order to have money...think about that for a second, why would an entity that can print its own money need taxes? They have an unlimited source of "revenue" at the press of a button. So why tax?
The answer, correctly pointed out by Phil above, is that taxes serve to regulate the economy (the amount of money in circulation versus the amount of goods being chased). Government spending is the gas pedal, taxation is the brakes, and going the speed limit safely involves keeping inflation in check by balancing these two forces.
Governemnt does not tax because they need our money...they DON'T. Any thinking to the contrary is delusional.
Before I start the longer portion of my comment, 3 things:
1) I'm an Independent that leans toward the right
2) Socioeconomically, I belong in the sub 150K annual income level
3) I'M IN AGREEMENT WITH IDEA AND THESIS presented above
My parents both worked and then built a successful business 20 years ago based on hard work and sacrifice. To say that this country is not the land of opportunity goes a bit too far as this country still provides a better environment to succeed than a lot of other countries. However, one can make the case that the ladder one can use to climb from one socioeconomic subclass to the next has wider spaces between the steps and the slope by which that ladder is positioned has gotten a lot closer to a 90 degree angle vs. a more manageable 45.
The gradual disappearance of the "middle class" is what will move this country to the level below that 1st world status. I have lived most of my life in a country (Philippines) where there is no real middle class and you're either in the "haves" or "have nots". 15 years ago, I didn't think that there was a good probability that this is where the country would be 15 years later.
It's not surprising anymore though to see why the economic (not stock market) bounce after each of the past 5 recessions/downturns has been less/lower than the previous one. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I would think that the preceding recessions have done a lot more damage to the middle class. Thus, when the next recession occurs, the true engine of the economy, what is left of the middle class from the previous downturn cannot help bail the country out.
When you see GE and a lot of companies pay an effective tax rate of 0% yet their executives making millions, you scratch your head and say WTF?!?
I must say, a family of 4 making 250K in NYC metro area (where I live) isn't the same as making 250K in San Antonio, TX. I'll give those who complain about 250K being rich vs. poor that. So that has to be addressed in any tax code revamp. BUT like you 250K and above SHOULDN'T be classified in the same level.
My solution wouldn't immediately address income disparity.
It would assist with employment for the manufacturing sector - creating higher demand for mfg labor - likely raising their bargaining power.
Apply all of the regulations, environmental laws, employee benefits, human rights, etc...apply to any imported goods. Most developed markets have equivalent reg's and therefore costs of production.
All else being equal - lower labor costs alone wouldn't tear into our manufacturing base as we've witnessed for the last 3 decades.
Why do importers get a free pass on using lower production operating standards - by-passing domestic production and stocking their shelves with the cheapest production? Wal-mart doesn;t give a damn about what a Virginia producer can offer if there's like production cheaper from anywhere else...except that 'like production' is surface only. All this 'green initiative' image being thrown about gets lost when the low cost EM producer comes to the table to deliver - regardless of their lack of equivalent standards and safeguards.
Look at the pricing differences between credit unions and commercial banks. One pays taxes and one doesn't. The small company I work for has a 34% marginal corporate tax rate. A lot of big companies pay no U.S. corporate taxes.
Reduce corporate taxes to cut business expense and tax the hell out of the top one half percent. The world will be a better place.
further grossing 300$ nets about 200$ after taxes&ssi
good to read ya again tho
How about the Corporate Royalty and their stock options. They get capital gains treatment, but there is none of their capital involved, (just the no-cost-to -them shares they took from their company's treasury).
Since they put up no capital, only time on the job, how can these profits POSSIBLY be treated as capital gains? The top 2% of the "rich" are a rotating pool of executives who cash in large amounts of stock options. I am not for ""soak the rich"", just for stock option bonus babies to pay ordinary income tax rates on this ordinary but excessive income. (Those $$ used in the stock buybacks to soak up the excess shares should have been my dividends!).
Point number two: the guy who sells you the toaster at BestBuy. I live in Australia, where the very same guy makes a minimum wage of $16.50 per hour. He gets reasonable/free health care; low-cost university, and if all else fails he gets a small retirement, whether he worked or not. The toaster itself costs about twice what it costs in the US. But I gladly pay it so I can live in a safe, just society, a society where my kids can find summer jobs, where banks pay 6% interest on CDs so retirees are OK, where I know that a bad illness will not force me into bankruptcy.
Wake up America, you've been sold a bill of goods. Endless war, endless banker bailouts, endless rule by the 1% is a disaster for your nation.
Somehow our citizens need to understand these facts.
It was wise of you to present it without any reference to political parties--since they are just different actors promoting optional flavors of the same outcome.
Thanks for the hard thought and clear exposition.
Very good comments. Thanks.
I am not here as an apologist for Phil, but I can say that I DO know a little about him. It's not my place to comment on what he does or does not do in terms of social improvement, but I have very good reason to believe he does a lot. It's just not visible.
"Philanthropy" does not always mean trying to get your name on a building. Not that Phil is on that scale. Not what I mean. I just know he has helped some people. But he doesn't take out billboards about it.
His Writings are not just a writing exercise, or a way to get his frustrations out. There's a little more to it.
You might also want to look into a dude 'name of Paul Tudor Jones. Interesting story there.
sorry, one more thing i just thought of......
A. I do hope you continue along your long term trek up the scales. I, like many, have spent a large part of my life in poverty. But I also spent about 15 years (mostly after the poverty part) earning a reasonable wage (and then salary), in a series of better and "semi-professional jobs. I got into those jobs ONLY because I did all the things over the previous 20 years that slowly led to them, in other words, I "taught" myself enough and then "bootstrapped it" to be able to work my way up in the world. Like you, every single step "up" I've taken has been as a result of my own work and initiative. Don't know what the future holds for me......still swingin' at the pitches......
B. Here's my question, more rhetorical than actual.........let's say, that through some incredibly good fortune (and yes, some very hard work on your part) you came across, say, $40 million over the next 5 years. Maybe you invent a better lightbulb or something (to borrow from Saving Private Ryan).
I don't know how large your immediate and extended family is, so just mentally adjust the 40 mil to whatever number would mean that you could not POSSIBLY spend all the money in your lifetime and the lifetime of every single family member, friend, or other people you care about. I mean, choose whatever number you want, so that it is "obscenely" large........just to make the point.
Question is, what would you do with the leftovers? I mean, forget 40 mil, let's say you made 500 mil. Lets say you set up yourself and every one of the people mentioned above to a level of truly unimaginable wealth and luxury forever. Let's say that took 100 mil, and we'll assume that includes enough investable cash that you could live off the interest at that same luxury level forever, without the principle going down. So let's say you've got 400 mil leftover.
What would you do with it? I mean that very seriously. It is a very good question to ponder.
If you did ANY kind of "philantrhropy" that was social in nature (not funding another dufus art museum), would you say that the people you help would be "lazy" or "undeservedly inferior"?
Are there any people outside your family and friends that you would feel comfortable "giving a hand to", to assist them in climbing out of poverty?
Keep in mind, that what what seems like a rounding error to a lot of rich can seem like a massive fortune to somebody who is homeless or starving or having suffered "wife battering" or severe abuse of any kind. In other words, pick a really poor person who is of good moral fiber, but comes from a background that could charitably be described as "extremely difficult". Maybe that person is 35 years old and has worked heavy labor for 15 years. Maybe having somebody help him get a decent reliable car, a place to live that has actual windows instead of cardboard covering half the windows, and enough kitchen stuff to be able to cook every day, would be an unimaginable stroke of good luck for him. Could you help a person like that under the circumstances I described, and feel OK about it?
I guess it's kind of an existenstal-philsophical question, but I think it is at the root of a huge amount of what the Human Condition is all about. I mean, the whole scenario that I describe, isn't that a lot of what "Christianity" is suppposed to be about? I'm not a religious person, so I'm not asking from that perspective.
This is, now that I think about it, a really, really important question. Some people who are bazillionaires won't give a penny to anybody unless it DID mean getting their name on a building. Some have an attitude that is almost "meaness". What I mean by that is an attitude of "I made mine the hard way, so everybody else can go screw themselves, I'm not helping anybody else out, they can suffer like I did". I'm talking here about somebody with a Billion dollars. There ARE businessmen in my state who have that much net worth. One guy has a 40 foot high bronze statue of liberty in his front yard (a mansion on the lake).
I mean, I don't have the right to tell him what to do with his money, but heh........
I mean, maybe the yound black kid from the ghetto that he helps out, helps him get an education, helps him get out of a pre-determined life of selling drugs, might be the same kid who he helps avoid being the one who robs him and shoots him on the street someday, because he has lived a life of frustration and racism.
just sayin, dude....
Thanks
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