-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 11/21/2016 10:02 AM, Razer wrote:
On 11/20/2016 09:49 PM, jim bell wrote:
Oh! I see you are justifying robbing people based on the mere assertion that they can 'afford' it.
No. I justify it on the fact that they're the criminals and taxes appropriately applied are really a form of restitution. If they don't like it they can hire an army. They can afford it. After all that's how they robbed the rest of us in the first place.
Taxes are payment for services rendered. In the United States, 500 billionaires presently own about 1/2 of the capital assets; to retain control of those assets they need a legal system that defines their rights of ownership and enforces them, civil Courts to arbitrate their internal disputes and legitimize abuses of power against outsiders, civil infrastructure built and maintained at public expense to support the productivity of their capital assets, and a propaganda regimen to persuade the rest of us that this is all for the best. The sovereign State is /their/ collectivist system, taxing the poor to subsidize the rich with all of the above services. Taxes even support cash payments and no-interest loans to the very rich, where and as bailing out one corporation benefits enough of the others to create a consensus to do that - at public expense.
Thing is taxes aren't appropriately applied. That 50% tax on the wealthy you speak of doesn't really exist after deductions and writedowns nd donations of high-heeled shoes to the Haiti relief fund. Right? Some wealthy people pay less taxes than that guy living in a box in a field. Actually most wealthy people pay almost nothing percentage-wise after all the bennies their plutocrat friends write into tax codes compared to their UNEARNED (as in they didn't actually work or produce anything useful to society) income.
I was wondering when someone would mention this. Rich people pay a very small fraction of the taxes they whine about and want to see abolished; instead they pay accountants and attorneys to advise them on how to avoid taxation. Some few billionaires do pay enough taxes that the numbers look impressive to illiterate peasants, for propaganda purposes. I recall there was a bit of a flap in the press at the turn of the century when some ungrateful assholes publicized the fact that Microsoft Inc. paid no corporate income tax; I believe this was "fixed" by arranging for token payments thereafter.
And then there's sales tax, which rips workers off way out of proportion to the wealthy.
It's not the tax. It's how it's collected, and certainly how it's disbursed (almost all of it to the war machine owned or invested in by the wealthy.)
Currency inflation is also a tax on the poor for the benefit of the rich. The lower classes store much of their wealth in the form of dollars that diminish in value, while the ruling class stores its wealth in instruments denoting ownership of physical assets whose value is not affected by currency inflation. Inflation also depresses wages, as the same "dollar amount" progressively buys less and less. The U.S. minimum wage from 1968, adjusted for inflation, would be $24.00/hr today. Political activists are presently running a "Fight For Fifteen" campaign in the U.S., asking for a de facto 40% pay cut relative to 1968's more or less "living" minimum wage. How fucked up is that?
I suppose you actually believe that bullshit about hard work and determination leading to affluence too.
Affluence requires collectivism, in the form of social and economic class loyalty; join the united front in support of employment and wage discrimination or you are out in the cold. Getting a "really good job" is a pay to play proposition. It is possible for independent entrepreneurs to "work around" class barriers; wildcat free enterprise works, for the tiny minority whose bright ideas and hard work do pay off. But when capitalist enterprises notice something chewing on the edge of their markets they crush it, as a matter of routine business practice. Counter examples can be found, but you will need a magnifying glass and tweezers. Libertarian and other alt-Right propaganda teaches us that Capitalism and Free Enterprise are the same thing, but in the real world they are natural enemies and when they collide, Capitalism always wins. Work will make you free? Sure it will. The spreading red stain on the U.S. political map happens to exactly match maps showing the geographic distribution of poverty, which brings with it both ignorance and anger - a fertile field for Fascist indoctrination. The less intelligent in that audience self-select KKK flavored messaging, the more intelligent gravitate toward Libertarian bullshit. Both flavors of alt-Right propaganda assert that their audiences are inherently superior to other people, that that if certain scapegoats were neutralized that audience would "regain all they have lost, and more." Just by coincidence, the ruling class - our billionaires - are never named as scapegoats, but instead are portrayed as fellow victims of an imaginary conspiracy of the weak and inferior. Changing out "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" for Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ayn Rand does not convert Fascism to Freedom, unless the freedom in question is that of the very rich to do whatever they want, restrained only by other factions within their same class, at everyone else's expense. In that case, a little rebranding to make Fascism more palatable to a U.S. market might be all it takes to get 360+ million peasants "off the backs" of those 500 billionaires who own 1/2 the capital assets in the U.S. By definition, organization and united action is political power. If you want the U.S. ruling class and its government off YOUR back, the fact that your fellow peasants outnumber your aristocratic overlords by more than a half million to one is the key to success: Your rulers have effectively unlimited financial assets and control of the State on their side, you have - or might be able to get - the power of massive numbers of boots on the ground on your side. Collectivism is the key to power: The very rich do it, cooperating to assure that nothing threatens their established collective power. Our rulers' propaganda contractors have been busy for generations teaching the rest of us that Collectivism is the Ultimate Evil; they are paid to pump out this message because collectivism is the only thing that can challenge the power of a well entrenched ruling class. The cure for Libertarianism is Populism. If you don't know what that is, there are a few clues here, but be forewarned: It requires getting up off your ass and actually doing things, not just bitching about how stupid those other people are. http://pilobilus.net/Strategic_Nonviolent_Conflict.zip :o) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJYMyjdAAoJEECU6c5XzmuqxcoH/1ma0nOBIRA/BI/Y2MkJjpcC hg8jqYHhgznipD8P7nKgPeqpXrKcEZRPDyKhy7VX16ByCztIi3svtqDR5bTtIGXG f4OD8bTZGzcs0Ohx0YAn2TqOV2YCqdOMXkscgLEJ06ZZyjLeJsTEa5J0UXE2iMyd Kenm1K17U/7kD7A09EzLNMCzE5SD+iXuk/TvaQ0nc3YTUpFV547p6uQYBOkWJ2Ev CikNFV9Qrr4DUFb45ue0iG0EgbNmdxoZzBWXF+R4GircCfCh0GlqZ8YsXZi7Djc0 23FPSu/t544N6TMJtxTiK1uXFgPgN/JgEnJkzLQSXFURJtGvgF/5BQr1VwaYFQk= =ENEL -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----