Thread: Spread your own wealth around cheapskate

"When Barack Obama responded to the Ohio plumber who didn't want his taxes raised that Obama wanted to "spread the wealth around," I wanted to tell him to spread his own wealth around. It was in any event a rare moment of candor on the part of Senator Obama.
Obama all but told the plumber that his wealth should be seized in the name of equity. The encounter played out one of the old themes of democratic politics: the appeal to the many to take from the few. It's traditionally an easy sell in democratic regimes.
Despite Obama's implication to the contrary, however, It doesn't represent much in the way of change. According to the most recent (2006) data released by the IRS, the top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 40 percent of all income taxes; the top 5 percent paid 60 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent paid virtually no income taxes (3 percent of all income taxes paid).
The personal income tax, the federal government's main source of revenue, is collected overwhelmingly from a relative handful of Americans. The large majority of all Americans pay little or no income tax.
Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have long worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. "If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city," warns Aristotle.
The founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle's worry. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be "incompatible with personal security or the rights of property." James Madison and others therefore made it a "first object of government" to protect personal property from unjust confiscation. Numerous provisions were included in the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect the property rights of citizens.
Given that one of the causes of the American Revolution was a tax, the founders understood very well that taxation could become a way for one group to prey on another. So while the Constitution empowered the federal government to levy taxes, it limited this power mostly to indirect taxes like tariffs, duties, and excise taxes. For much of American history the federal government subsisted solely on those fees.
The Constitution did grant the federal government the power to levy "direct" taxes on a "per head" basis, but required that all money raised this way must be given to the states according to their population. The aim here was to preserve a decentralized federal system of rule, and to make it "difficult to place a direct tax on capital, the most destructive tax in terms of economic growth and economic initiative," according to Professor Edward Erler.
Until the Civil War, the idea of a tax on individual incomes would have seemed preposterous to most Americans. Only as an emergency wartime measure did Congress adopt an income tax in the 1860s, and the measure was allowed to lapse with little fanfare in 1872. Estimates vary regarding the percentage of citizens affected by the income tax of this era, but none places it at more than 10 percent.
The modern income tax begins with the Progressive era in American politics. In an influential 1889 article entitled "The Owners of the United States," crusading attorney Thomas Shearman argued that the lion's share of the country's wealth was in a limited number of hands. If an income tax was not adopted, he warned, within 30 years "the United States of America will be substantially owned" by 50,000 people.
This marked the beginning of a never-ending campaign. Many activists since have characterized America as a permanent plutocracy. And their prescription has generally been more and higher taxes.
Shearman's advocacy of an income tax found a receptive audience in populist politician William Jennings Bryan. Exploiting the dire economic circumstances created by the depression of 1893, Bryan avidly promoted the adoption of an income tax. His proposal succeeded when Congress passed a 2 percent flat tax on incomes over $4,000 in 1894. The following year, however, the Supreme Court held the tax to be unconstitutional.
In response, Progressives condemned the Constitution as an instrument crafted by the rich to protect their selfish interests (Allen Smith), and a document rendered obsolete by intellectual progress in the century since its drafting (Woodrow Wilson).
The Progessive condemnation of the Constitution climaxed in 1913 with the publication of An Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution by Columbia history professor Charles Beard. Beard purported to expose the Constitution as the handiwork of a propertied elite serving its own interests to the exclusion of the majority.
Few works of American history have been more erroneous than Beard's, as later shown by debunking historians like Robert Brown and Forrest McDonald. But by the time scholarship caught up with Beard's book, a lot of damage had been done. Frenzied attacks on "the rich" and "the wealthy" culminated in the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, authorizing federal taxation of income from all sources without limit.
So why hasn't the majority in America helped itself to more of the minority's wealth, as Aristotle and our founders feared? Partly because the protections for individual property erected by the founders have worked. Partly, too, because many Americans' political convictions are (thankfully) based on principle rather than immediate economic self-interest. And partly because the fraction of Americans who think of themselves as rich, or likely to become rich in the future, is quite large, undercutting the incentive for bashing the rich.
Obama's appeal for higher taxes to "spread the wealth around" nevertheless harks back to an old theme in political philosophy and American politics. You can believe in it, but it's not exactly change, and it is more to be worried about than hoped for."



Power Line - Spread your own wealth around

If only a few people spread around their wealth then the poor get less money.

Government is just a way for people to agree to donate money, and since everyone knows that everyone else is doing it, they know that there donations won't be in vain.

Most of the government donations should be at the state level, but the idea of a government to spread wealth around (in the form of education, unemployment benefits UH, internal improvements) still makes alot of sense.

And if McCain was trying to talk about the horrors of this, he wasn't specific at all because he isn't a real fiscal conservative. So he would be lying.

How about you spread your heartless american capitalist bullshit back where it belongs in the 1800s? :laughing:

Originally Posted by Nerv14

If only a few people spread around their wealth then the poor get less money.

Government is just a way for people to agree to donate money, and since everyone knows that everyone else is doing it, they know that there donations won't be in vain.

Most of the government donations should be at the state level, but the idea of a government to spread wealth around (in the form of education, unemployment benefits UH, internal improvements) still makes alot of sense.

And if McCain was trying to talk about the horrors of this, he wasn't specific at all because he isn't a real fiscal conservative. So he would be lying.

First off it's not the governments job to determine for you who is deserving of your charity. Second, what makes you think for one second that your government will actually take that money and put it to good use let alone get it to a charity.

You know damn well that Barrack wasn't talking about roads and infrastructure when he told old Joe that he was planning on spreading that wealth around. Or are you too dishonest to admit it ? How about we demand that our government reduce spending, and manage the revenue they currently recieve. Their would plenty of money for infrastructure.

Also why would you hand over you money to a proven inept system that has no crediblity with the American people ? You know what they say about a fool and his money..

Originally Posted by Six

Also why would you hand over you money to a proven inept system that has no crediblity with the American people ? You know what they say about a fool and his money..

"Proven inept" hardly - its just because of your industrial revolutionary mindset that you can't understand that the rest of the Western World has progressed ahead of the United States, and you are being left in the dust.

Originally Posted by Ausinus

"Proven inept" hardly - its just because of your industrial revolutionary mindset that you can't understand that the rest of the Western World has progressed ahead of the United States, and you are being left in the dust.

Huh ??... What is this the mid 19th Century ? I was refering to our polticians decision to destroy the economy by pushing sub-prime morgages on people who never had any bussines owning a house not to mention they're basically beholden to lobbyist for large corporations and not their constituents.

Originally Posted by Nerv14

If only a few people spread around their wealth then the poor get less money.

Works for me.

The poor don't deserve more money unless they earn it.

That means they have to get a job and be productive. With the economy collapsing we really should stop subsidizing indolence.

Originally Posted by Nerv14

Government is just a way for people to agree to donate money, and since everyone knows that everyone else is doing it, they know that there donations won't be in vain.

Yeah, government collecting "donations" looks suspiciously like Catholic ushers passing the plate....and pointing their machine guns down the row.

Originally Posted by Nerv14

Most of the government donations should be at the state level, but the idea of a government to spread wealth around (in the form of education, unemployment benefits UH, internal improvements) still makes alot of sense.

Here are the two ideal ways for a person to spread his wealth around:

Spend the money to buy manufactured goods for himself, his family, or his mistress.

Invest the money on companies he expect to return a profit to himself.

Originally Posted by Ausinus

How about you spread your heartless american capitalist bullshit back where it belongs in the 1800s? :laughing:

How about you take your socialist nonsense back to France, it's already damaged this economy severely.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

How about you take your socialist nonsense back to France, it's already damaged this economy severely.

Dontcha just love these clowns? The preconceptions are so strong, that they prevent people from seeing reality.

Hey FFA - run the numbers, pal. Do the math. It ain't gonna work your way, anymore. It just ain't. Somethin's got to be done, and YOU ARE STANDING IN THE WAY with the "preconceived ideology".

It's time for new thinking, pal. "Out of the box", they call it.

"Change", I think they call it.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

How about you take your socialist nonsense back to France, it's already damaged this economy severely.

Funny because the last time that the US had policies vaguely resembling socialist ones was in the 1990s. :laughing: