Obama's get rich quick scheme: Adopting a VAT Tax.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

If you can't afford a specific social program, then don't implement it until you can. I should also mention that deficits don't really matter for sovereign States with strong economies. So if you want a lot of social services of great quality, then you have to have a strong economy with high economic output so all that wealth can be put to good social use.

If only we followed your advice. But even still, paying for these social programs eventually hurts the economy.

The best social program in my fairytale land is a govt. that allows companies to create jobs.

[pahnphoenix]

It is America at it's finest, we get raped by taxes. When you work 40 hours at 10/h, and only see 275ish bucks in your paycheck as a full-time student, you get pissed. Now with increased taxes at the beginning of the year, and another tax ontop of our sales taxes, why not donate all of your check to the government and just skip all the B.S

if you're really so angry about being exploited and oppressed, you should become a leftist and be angry at the people who have your money, not the abstract idea of taxes. p.s. no your money isn't going to poor people on welfare or smokers getting healthcare. rich/poor gaps don't widen via magic.

[Cadsuane]

If only we followed your advice. But even still, paying for these social programs eventually hurts the economy.

The best social program in my fairytale land is a govt. that allows companies to create jobs.

You have... problems, naturally, implementing liberal policy. It would be stupid to deny this insight. We can call them market distortions or perverse incentives or the systemic undermining of personal responsibility. The mistake I think is not realizing that you have similar economic and social problems with more laissez faire policy.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

The mistake I think is not realizing that you have similar economic and social problems with more laissez faire policy.

Like, for example...the boom/bust cycle? Or something else?

[Kuya]

One obvious one is the concentration of wealth at the top. That is, polarization of wealth and income.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Have you ever looked at income statistics Kuya? The people at the top rarely stay there. Granted they may remain rich, and some do succeed in remaining in the top 10%, but the top 10% is always changing.

Also, why is it such a bad thing, accepting your definition of it as true. I'm not living in a gutter as a result of the rich having more wealth, nor are most people. And when rich people stop buying their expensive toys we know what happens. The company that makes their expensive planes lays off 1,000 people. I bet they weren't rich!

[Kuya]

It's not about who stays at the top, but that smaller amounts of people own most of the wealth and income. High wealth and income polarity is associated to social ills, particularly it seems, people get the feeling that the system is rigged in the favour of a few. Not to mention as income concentrates, so too does it mean that political influence concentrates.

Relatedly or perhaps not, it seems that constant unemployment is a staple of our current reality rather than a temporary aberration.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

It's not about who stays at the top, but that smaller amounts of people own most of the wealth and income. High wealth and income polarity is associated to social ills, particularly it seems, people get the feeling that the system is rigged in the favour of a few. Not to mention as income concentrates, so too does it mean that political influence concentrates.

Relatedly or perhaps not, it seems that constant unemployment is a staple of our current reality rather than a temporary aberration.

I disagree. I think the ills you cite are not a result of wealth concentration.

1) I think liberals incite those feelings.

2) As wealth is created, yet the number of people to be influenced stays the same, obviously what you say is going to happen. Just another reason the founders were brilliant. For every 30K in the population we were supposed to get a new house member. Not so anymore. Something tells me that now matter how rich someone got, they couldn't influence 3600+ house votes. Therefore, the problem isn't wealth concentration, it was a bill passed back in the 30's or around then.

Edit: Yes I realize that's a radical solution that will probably never happen.

[Cadsuane]

Like, for example...the boom/bust cycle? Or something else?

That's one example. Keynesian policy as opposed to neo-liberal policy makes long term investments more palatable. The big multi-nationals prefer state intervention in the economy; nobody really wants a hyper capitalistic system for economic purposes. I know that's not really what you're advocating, but it's worth mentioning.

Income disparity isn't bad in and of itself, it's just that alot of it suggests the existence of socio-economic classes separated by barriers of some sort that stymie movement from one to another. In a perfect world the opportunities of an individual are only affected by personal limits and so take advantage of them as their actual competence allows, and are incentivized accordingly. The idea goes that if you have such a meritocracy it will be short lived unless you take measures to maintain it. For example the children of the first generation of genuinely successful people make up the embedded castes of the second generation, and so on and so on, until competence and skill aren't remunerated accordingly and the incentives become perverse which results in bad things, inefficiency being one. This is one (not terribly relevant but easy to understand) example of a social barrier.

But this is very theoretical. Suffice to say that social mobility (the frequency of rich people getting poor and vice versa) is something that can be measured and that it is in the state's interest to fiddle with.

[Kuya]

I disagree. I think the ills you cite are not a result of wealth concentration.

1) I think liberals incite those feelings.

2) As wealth is created, yet the number of people to be influenced stays the same, obviously what you say is going to happen. Just another reason the founders were brilliant. For every 30K in the population we were supposed to get a new house member. Not so anymore. Something tells me that now matter how rich someone got, they couldn't influence 3600+ house votes. Therefore, the problem isn't wealth concentration, it was a bill passed back in the 30's or around then.

Edit: Yes I realize that's a radical solution that will probably never happen.

In terms of the effect of income inequality, i refer you to these links:

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesam...er/wealth.html

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesam...ate_wealth.pdf

http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet....atePickett.pdf

http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266816/

Some quotes from the last page of the last link:

It is easy to make too much of this, and a few conservatives have done so in seeking to dismiss the importance (or even existence) of the Great Divergence. Let's look at their arguments.

Inequality is good. Every year the American Economic Association invites a distinguished economist to deliver at its annual conference the Richard T. Ely Lecture. Ely, a founder of the AEA and a leader in the Progressive movement, would have been horrified by the 1999 lecture that Finis Welch, a professor of economics (now emeritus) at Texas A&M, delivered in his name. Its title was "In Defense of Inequality."
Welch began by stating that "all of economics results from inequality. Without inequality of priorities and capabilities, there would be no trade, no specialization, and no surpluses produced by cooperation." He invited his audience to consider a world in which skill, effort, and sheer chance played no role whatsoever in what you got paid. The only decision that would affect your wage level would be when to leave school. "After that, the clock ticks, and wages follow the experience path. Nothing else matters. Can you imagine a more horrible, a more deadening existence?"

But something close to the dystopia Welch envisioned already exists for those toiling in the economy's lower tiers. Welch should have a chat with his office receptionist. Or he could read Nickel and Dimed, or the 2010 book Catching Out by Dick J. Reavis, a contributing editor at Texas Monthly who went undercover as a day laborer. Waitresses, construction workers, dental assistants, call-center operators—people in these jobs are essentially replaceable, and usually have bosses who don't distinguish between individual initiative and insubordination. Even experience is of limited value, because it's often accompanied by diminishing physical vigor.

Welch said that he believed inequality was destructive only when "the low-wage citizenry views society as unfair, when it views effort as not worthwhile, when upward mobility is impossible or so unlikely that its pursuit is not worthwhile." Colleen's comment would appear to suggest that the first of these conditions has not been met. But that's only because I omitted what she went on to say: "But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then … if I had to … and still be able to buy groceries the next day." Colleen may not begrudge the rich the material goods they've acquired through skill, effort, and sheer chance, but that doesn't mean she thinks her own labors secure her an adequate level of economic security. Clearly, they don't.

Kaus would like to separate social equality from income equality, but the two go hand in hand. In theory they don't have to, but in practice they just do. Among industrialized nations, those that have achieved the greatest social equality are the same ones that have achieved the greatest income equality. France, for example, has a level of income inequality much lower than that of most other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It's one of the very few places where income inequality has been going down. (Most everywhere else it's gone up, though nowhere to the degree it has in the United States.) France also enjoys what the World Health Organization calls the world's finest health care system (by which the WHO means, in large part, the most egalitarian one; this is the famous survey from 2000 in which the U.S. ranked 37th).

Do France's high marks on both social equality and income equality really strike you as a coincidence? As incomes become more unequal, a likelier impulse among the rich isn't to urge or even allow the government to create or expand public institutions where they can mix it up with the proles. It's to create or expand private institutions that will help them maintain separation from the proles, with whom they have less and less in common. According to Jonathan Rowe, who has written extensively about social equality, that's exactly what's happening in the United States. In an essay titled "The Vanishing Commons" that appeared in Inequality Matters, a 2005 anthology, Rowe notes that Congress has been busy extending copyright terms and patent monopolies and turning over public lands to mining and timber companies for below-market fees." In an 'ownership' society especially," Rowe writes, "we should think about what we own in common, not just what we keep apart."

Quality of life is improving. This argument has been made by too many conservatives to count. Yes, it's true that an unemployed steelworker living in the 21st century is in many important ways better off than the royals and aristocrats of yesteryear. Living conditions improve over time. But people do not experience life as an interesting moment in the evolution of human societies. They experience it in the present and weigh their own experience against that of the living. Brooks cites (even though it contradicts his argument) a famous 1998 study by economists Sara Solnick (then at the University of Miami, now at the University of Vermont) and David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health. Subjects were asked which they'd prefer: to earn $50,000 while knowing everyone else earned $25,000, or to earn $100,000 while knowing everyone else earned $200,000. Objectively speaking, $100,000 is twice as much as $50,000. Even so, 56 percent chose $50,000 if it meant that would put them on top rather than at the bottom. We are social creatures and establish our expectations relative to others.

That income inequality very much matters is the thesis of the 2009 book The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, two medical researchers based in Yorkshire. The book has been criticized for overreaching. Wilkinson and Pickett relate income inequality trends not only to mental and physical health, violence, and teenage pregnancy, but also to global warming. But their larger point—that income inequality is bad not only for people on the losing end but also for society at large—seems hard to dispute. "Modern societies," they write,

will depend increasingly on being creative, adaptable, inventive, well-informed and flexible communities, able to respond generously to each other and to needs wherever they arise. These are characteristics not of societies in hock to the rich, in which people are driven by status insecurities, but of populations used to working together and respecting each other as equals.

The United States' economy is currently struggling to emerge from a severe recession brought on by the financial crisis of 2008. Was that crisis brought about by income inequality? Some economists are starting to think it may have been. David Moss of Harvard Business School has produced an intriguing chart that shows bank failures tend to coincide with periods of growing income inequality. "I could hardly believe how tight the fit was," he told the New York Times. Princeton's Paul Krugman has similarly been considering whether the Great Divergence helped cause the recession by pushing middle-income Americans into debt. The growth of household debt has followed a pattern strikingly similar to the growth in income inequality (see the final graph).

Raghuram G. Rajan, a business school professor at the University of Chicago, recently argued on the New Republic's Web site that "let them eat credit" was "the mantra of the political establishment in the go-go years before the crisis." Christopher Brown, an economist at Arkansas State University, wrote a paper in 2004 affirming that "inequality can exert a significant drag on effective demand." Reducing inequality, he argued, would also reduce consumer debt. Today, Brown's paper looks prescient.
Heightened partisanship in Washington and declining trust in government have many causes (and the latter slide predates the Great Divergence). But surely the growing income chasm between the poor and middle class and the rich, between the Sort of Rich and the Rich, and even between the Rich and the Stinking Rich, make it especially difficult to reestablish any spirit of e pluribus unum. Republicans and Democrats compete to show which party more fervently opposes the elite, with each side battling to define what "elite" means. In a more equal society, the elite would still be resented. But I doubt that opposing it would be an organizing principle of politics to the same extent that it is today.

Laissez faire policy is part and parcel of that same destructive individualism which needs to be rectified.

[Plow]

Have you ever looked at income statistics Kuya? The people at the top rarely stay there. Granted they may remain rich, and some do succeed in remaining in the top 10%, but the top 10% is always changing.

Also, why is it such a bad thing, accepting your definition of it as true. I'm not living in a gutter as a result of the rich having more wealth, nor are most people. And when rich people stop buying their expensive toys we know what happens. The company that makes their expensive planes lays off 1,000 people. I bet they weren't rich!

10% barely changes, it's America's "middle class," which is hilarious in and of itself

[Rhinox]

Neo-feudalism: plaguing Conservatives since '81.

[Rhinox]

Have you ever looked at income statistics Kuya? The people at the top rarely stay there. Granted they may remain rich, and some do succeed in remaining in the top 10%, but the top 10% is always changing.

Also, why is it such a bad thing, accepting your definition of it as true. I'm not living in a gutter as a result of the rich having more wealth, nor are most people. And when rich people stop buying their expensive toys we know what happens. The company that makes their expensive planes lays off 1,000 people. I bet they weren't rich!

Few quick questions.

What happens when Donald Trump files for bankruptcy three times?

What happens when Joe sixpack files for Bankruptcy?

Answers

Donald Trump profits from filing chapter 11 which he did 3 times and is considered to be a financial genius.

Joe Sixpack credit is shot for about 7-8 years and He is considered to be financially irresponsible.

[Maguspk]

Let's take shit out of context guys, rich people in a capitalist society this is ridiculous!

Also personal bankruptcy != business bankruptcy dumbass, Donald Trump is rich because he did shit right. Joe Sixpack is a fucking dumbass who used credit stupidly and went bankrupt, he deserves to have poor credit scores, the system works fine.

[Rhinox]

Let's take shit out of context guys, rich people in a capitalist society this is ridiculous!

Also personal bankruptcy != business bankruptcy dumbass, Donald Trump is rich because he did shit right. Joe Sixpack is a fucking dumbass who used credit stupidly and went bankrupt, he deserves to have poor credit scores, the system works fine.

lol

[Rhinox]

I couldn't help laugh I'm sorry. Read up on Donald Trump since you obviously don't know dick about his personal life and how it affected his businesses.

You realize my point is the great disparity between say.. Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 right? You proved it with an exclamation points and for that I thank you.

You don't know the circumstances of which why my fictional character filed for bankruptcy

His wife and three of his kids were killed and the other gravely injured by a drunken driver while walking them to school and seeing as him and his wife were only children and both their parents were dead he had no one to help him with funeral costs. Of course he was barely making enough to say he wasn't living paycheck to paycheck with the lose of his wife and her income he couldn't afford payments on the house, car and the family van along with the medical bills of his last surviving child.

Many charity and fundraisers were raised to help him but they simply were not enough.

but yes this is the fucking dumbass who deserves the poor credit score to whom you claim the system works for.

[kuronosan]

Rhinowned.

[Psion]

I agree we spend a little -too- much on defense, but I don't think we need to cut it back that much. America has made lots of enemies along the way, and I think it's too little too late to cut back and be like these other nations. Maybe cut back to 2/3 of what we use now, but even that might be a little much...

Remember, we're a lot bigger then those other nations, and as such the costs of defending our interests rises exponentially. It be an awesome world if we could just say this land is ours, please don't enter it or abuse it w/o our authority, but we both know that isn't the case.

lol? maybe you missed the chart someone posted not many before yours.

United States:

United states Military spending on 2010:
base budget: 533.8 billion
+overseas contingency operations: total of 680 billion
+defense-related expenditures outside the department of defense: between 216 billion to 361 billion extra
grand total for defense related spending: $880 billion to $1.03 trillion for fiscal year 2010.
That, is a huge fucking number.

oh, and US population? ~310,489,000 people, or 310.5 million.

money spent per person on defense this year: $2,190.02 if you just go by department of defenses spending this year. If you go by the max of all defense related spending, that's up to $3,317.23 per person this year. I know people are precious, but when it's that much per year, that's probably an indicator of something being very very wrong in our budget, not how much we cherish our slave work... i mean, population.

Now, lets compare this to some other large countries!

Russia:

Military spending in 2008: 58 billion offically spent, though it's speculated to be considerably higher, possibly up to 250 billion. Maybe.

Russia population: 141,927,297 as of 2010

Spending per person on defense: $408.66 per person on defense if you go by the official number of 58 billion, and $1,761.47 per person if you go by the wild estimate of 250 billion.

Hmm, I dunno, they're half our population, but they spent only a fraction of that, maybe your costs rise exponentially as you go higher in population theory is right!

China:

Offical spending in 2009 of military: 70 billion. the US defense intelligence agency claims that it's actually 105-150 billion though.

Population of china as of 2010: 1,338,612,968 (yes, that's billions, not millions.)

Spending on defense per person in 2010: $52.29 per person if you go by offical number of 70 billion, and $112.06 per person if you go by the US intelligence numbers.

Shit, maybe your theory is fucking wrong as hell. It looks like things should be getting CHEAPER the higher the population goes. Seriously, look at that, china is spending 97% less per person than us. and their population is over four times ours!

Clearly, one does NOT need an obscene military budget to not get trashed, since I haven't exactly heard china screaming for help over countries invading it all the time. have you? <_<;

[Maguspk]

I couldn't help laugh I'm sorry. Read up on Donald Trump since you obviously don't know dick about his personal life and how it affected his businesses.

You realize my point is the great disparity between say.. Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 right? You proved it with an exclamation points and for that I thank you.

You don't know the circumstances of which why my fictional character filed for bankruptcy

His wife and three of his kids were killed and the other gravely injured by a drunken driver while walking them to school and seeing as him and his wife were only children and both their parents were dead he had no one to help him with funeral costs. Of course he was barely making enough to say he wasn't living paycheck to paycheck with the lose of his wife and her income he couldn't afford payments on the house, car and the family van along with the medical bills of his last surviving child.

Many charity and fundraisers were raised to help him but they simply were not enough.

but yes this is the fucking dumbass who deserves the poor credit score to whom you claim the system works for.

You're just making shit up. You need to do some research on Mr. Trump, you're just spreading lies at this point and you most likely don't even know better you're just parroting something you heard or read somewhere. You can't just fabricate a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is immune to the credit system or whatever the fuck you were trying to convey by saying 'his 3 bankruptcies' were somehow less significant than Mr. Random Dude's.

As for your hypothetical dude, that is just an unfortunate consequence of how expensive medical bills can be. I don't give a fuck about whatever sad story you want to make up, it doesn't change that things cost money and if you can't afford it and you prove you aren't good for it, then you are punished.

[Volgin]

What happened to the free market? Seriously, people are being punished for working harder. It bugs me when people say tax the rich when the majority had to work hard to get there, and most of them donate a large sum of their money anyways. Why should I go to school for 7 years to become a doctor work 60-70 hours a week when I make as much as much as a janitor when it's all said and done. America used to have a mentality: work hard and you can one day be a 'bigshot'.