Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Absolutely correct. It is because everyone’s salary and resulting standard of living is reduced to the point of equal misery for all involved.
The only ones left with a large disposable income are foreign investors, and the government leaders. Everyone else, well, ends up “sacrificing” for the good of the state.
Shudder.
To quote Ten Years After: ” Tax the rich, feed the poor · Till there are no rich no more”
It always struck me that the lyrics said “…till there are no RICH no more”.
Why wouldn’t it work since the top 50% of tax payers pay like 95% of income taxes. We are approaching the point that almost 50% of wage earners pay nothing in income taxes. Then there are those who pay no income taxes but actually receive monies from the federal government in the form of income tax credits. No one should have a free ride, even if it cost them a few hundred dollars each year.
Damn, I am so good looking that I could almost fall in love with muself.lol
Too late!
Left out the first word – Way!
And they still want to have a say in how the money of those subsidizing them is spent. Looks like no one has taught them 1) it is all about competition, so go out and get yours (gee…even the Great White sharks know this) and 2) in kindergarten, you were taught to share….and not to steal. Implied, you shared what you had, too, not just take it all from whoever had some, but then, that feeds the current “be a bully and take what you thing what you are owed because you have to feel good all the time” movement (aka “self esteem”).
The “income inequality” argument is crap and always will be. It’s an argument from people who are really bad at math.
There is a fixed limit on the lower level of income- nothing. There is no limit on an upper level of income. In a growing, healthy economy, we should expect to see the disparity grow. For whatever reason, there will always be people who cannot or will not improve above the lowest level. Why should others be punished for that?
Crap? Please reread Douthat’s piece.
He certainly acknowledges there is growing inequality. And all stats point to it. He just is wrong about the reason for it, by conveniently blaming the “liberals”.
Our massive and robust GDP for many decades was fueled by our unparalleled productivity and the tremendous rise of the post-war, working middle class.
Today our GDP is in severe recession and unemployment grows, especially for the middle class. Unfortunately, we no longer are able to have the massive gains in productivity we have enjoyed in the past. We have exported it. Nor do we have the same, growing middle class, and not likely will in the foreseeable future.
Without continuing improvements in productivity, and a resurgence of the working middle class, our GDP suffers. And we risk becoming a mere shadow of our former nation’s self. A few rich, and many poor leads eventually to a banana republic. And that is a recipe for you know what.
It is not politics; it is economics.
Fliter, prior to the rise of the middle class after world war 2 we had the robber barons and the giants of manufacturing like Carnegie and of finance like Cornelius Vanderbilt. Seems to me not much has changed in the area of the super-rich.
What has changed is the playing field, specifically the tax laws and obligations placed upon business. It was Kaiser, in his shipyards, who built a clinic so workers could be treated close to their place of work and benefit the employer via fewer sick days. Today we expect two weeks of paid sick leave.
A growing economy, low tax rates, few obligations and a need for labor made the middle class grow from the 40′s through the 80′s. Once unskilled or semi-skilled labor was priced higher overall than outsourcing to mexico or China or India, even though productivity went up jobs went down.
You’re correct it’s not politics, it is economics. And taking 100% of what the top 5% earn won’t raise the wage of the other 95% by any significant amount. What it will do is discourage those top 5% from staying here and building businesses here. And where will the wage-slave middle class be when the employers pull up stakes and leave? Where will the government coffers be when we can no longer steal from the high earners and pass the graft out to the low earners?
It is purely economics, and so far I’ve yet to see a better system than capitalism.
– Max
Max, The country has prospered in spite of the rapacious wolves in Congress. In the last 20 years we have reached a tipping point where regulation and taxation have so heavily burdened industry that the industrialists have said no more and shipped the work and plants to China, among other places.
In tandem with that, the left of both parties have granted tax relief to lower income people so that over 40% of the wage earners no longer pay taxes, and even get a refundable “tax credit.” As a result they have become tax eaters along with Das Buros.
No one drawing a Federal check, or not paying taxes should be voting, period. Democracy has become that nightmare of two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
The entire mess is insane, and can’t be sustained. I fear we have passed the tipping point for the process begun by the “New Deal.” The end is not going to be pretty, and the main perpetrators will be dragged kicking and screaming to swallow the medicine they should have taken years ago, but refused.
But at the macro level, it IS politics. When one party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the group responsible for the education of our future working population, with an ever increasing level of resources, and an ever declining level of performance, then it is impossible for politics to not be a part of it.
Douthat is right about the downward pressure on low skilled Americans by unlimited low skilled immigrants. The part I always wonder about is, how can Americans, with free access to over $100K of K-12 education, not have the skills to out compete non-native English speakers, who can barely read or write? Whose education typically ended in the fifth grade? And why does a party that champions that it is for the “little man”, not hold one of its major benefactors for that sorry condition? Oh. Guess I answered my own question.
We are headed for the crapper if we can’t take $100K of taxpayer resources, and turn out labor that is at least skilled enough to have jobs better than assembling sandwiches at Panera Bread. Maybe the German have it right — at the very least, even the Hauptschule grads don’t get stuck at the Bäckerei handing out brotchen. That goes to the Slovakians. We could learn from that. But it won’t happen as long as the NEA’s political clout with the neo-coms insulates them from accountability.