I call Grover Norquist on this analogy about taxing the rich

[JohnnyRingo]

He used it tonight on Bill Maher's show, but I've heard it before because conservatives ape the theory constantly. It's an anecdote against taking a fair share from the wealthy and why stimulus programs don't work.

He compares it to taking a bucket of water from one end of a lake, and dumping it into the other end and declaring a higher water level. He uses that to prove moving money is an ineffective charade.

I have a similar one that involves real money.

Compare two $50 bills. one is crisp and new as the day it was printed because it sat in an account or a safe since it left the mint. The other is dog eared, wrinkled, and has graffiti with "Where's George?" stamped on one side.

Which bill fed the economy and created private sector jobs?

Working people circulate nearly every dollar they can get their hands on and buy goods that have to be manufactured, while the crisp one was equal to a score pad in a game of Yahtzee.

Norquist's anecdote is all wet.

[Angry Dragon]

1. Norguist has his head up his ass

and all he can see is shit

[freshwest]

2. If 'moving money is an ineffective charade' then why do the 1% always move it to themselves?

Cash flow is important, or it wouldn't be what they spend 99% of their time scheming to get more of. His analogy is the inverse of what his masters do.

That still counts, Grover, you miserable little toady. Did you really think we couldn't figure that one out?

Nordquist needs to look in the mirror. Ah, excuse me. I forgot vampires don't have a reflection. Never mind.

[hfojvt]

3. well I myself am putting at least $6,000 in my IRA account this year

I am already at $4,000. I am also gonna put some more money in the stock market. These low interest rates are brutal. Theoretically, the credit union lends that money out and it circulates, but I am not sure how that works in practice because they list some $10 million in "investments".

[JohnnyRingo]

6. What I call the "working class"

are the tens of millions who earn an average of $25k. Some with decent union jobs can net about $50k, but there are at least an equal number making much less. A more accurate description is the working poor, but most are fooled into believing they're the vast middle class.

Within that group, people are trying to raise families and balance their spending money with paying the bills. That leaves very little for investment. Most in that class know little about the capital gains tax and what the return is even on a passbook account. What they don't pay on daily expenses like gas and dinner, goes into a checking account to pay the monthly bills. Putting away a thousand dollars a month is an unrealistic dream.

Well more than half of America currently lives hand to mouth, and collectively that's a lot of money moving through the economy. What America needs is a raise for those who circulate 98% of their paycheck, and a tax on those who invest 98%. If we get a raise of 30%, we'll still find a way to spend it. Driving a car to work that was built in the 21st century would be nice.

If that's class warfare, we're storming the castle from the low ground.

[hfojvt]

16. my own income is (or will be)

$32,310.20, not incouding interest income, capital gains and money from recycling cans, etc. That's a fair amount for a single guy, but not spectactular. The $6,000 in IRA investment saves me about $1,000 in taxes. Since I am going to save anyway, it might as well be in an IRA.

Most people do not live hand to mouth in the sense that they are omly buying the bare necessities. They buy many luxuries such as cell phones and cable TV, to name just two.

Do you think it is bad for a working person to save? I have had a savings account since I was 8 (and I am 50 now).

[JohnnyRingo]

17. There's nothing wrong with saving...

But the fact you pointed out, that the vast "middle class" survives hand to mouth with some feeble conveniences like a cell phone or internet, drives home my point that the working class will circulate almost every penny they earn up to a certain level. That's what drives the economy, not investments or bank accounts. If they see a modest raise in income, they'll find something new to spend it on, and someone else will get a job producing and/or selling it.

It's good you are able to bank such a substantial amount of your income. People who are still raising families don't have that option without living like the Amish.

[ErikJ]

4. Too much weight on one side of the boat tips it over

Same with national income inequality.

[pansypoo53219]

5. GROVER can never EVER NEVER use ronald reagan EVER AGAIN as reagan

ROSE taxes 7 times. increased FICA taxes to cover the baby boom. SO, grover, STFU and go to hell.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

7. Why the media pays any attention to this narcissistic juvenile

is beyond me. It's bad enough Republicans take him seriously.

[Franks1]

8. Spam deleted by OKNancy (MIR Team)

[jmowreader]

9. Let me modify Grover's analogy a little

I have a swimming pool. As does Norquist, George Bush, nine or ten DUers and a couple of freepers. And we all live around a central water tank. (And believe you me, Norquist is a pain in the ass to live next to--the worthless fuck insists on smoking cheap cigars on his back porch and stinking up the neighborhood.)

About once a week, we all take a bucket of water out of our pools and put it in the central tank. When the city's water tank runs low, we use this water for drinking and washing.

That's what taxes are: all of us taking some of our money and putting it into a central place for the benefit of all. Unfortunately, Norquist can't understand "benefit of all."

[Warren Stupidity]

15. That doesn't do it justice either.

Tax revenue doesn't sit in a tank waiting for a drought. It circulates. A better analogy is crop irrigation. Tax revenue flows, for example, into the war industry, where it employs hundreds of thousands of people and makes lots of Grover's admirers very wealthy men. These same very wealthy men then turn around and support Grover's stupid ideology, but they know full well that their lock on the tax revenue stream is not threatened. They have no intention at all to actually reduce tax farming on us peasants. Why would they?

[jmowreader]

18. NOTHING really does it justice

What Grover described is Soviet economics.

In "Inside the Soviet Army," a book written by a Soviet spy who defected to Great Britain rather than be executed by his own employer, he devoted a chapter to the cost of the Soviet war machine. In it he claimed the Soviet army cost nothing at all: because the government owned the mine the ore came from, the smelter that turned the ore into metal, the factory that turned the metal into guns and the army that used the guns, no money needed to change hands. Rather, the minister of defense called the gun factory and told them to deliver one thousand guns to the 35th Motor-Rifle Division, after which the gun factory would tell the smelter to deliver enough metal to make the guns and the smelter would tell the mine to deliver enough ore to make the metal. No money actually ever changed hands because it didn't need to.

But in a capitalist country, the government does not own the mine, the smelter or the gun factory; rather, it has to buy the guns with money, the gun factory has to buy the metal and the smelter has to buy the ore. But the government has to get its money from somewhere, and the only feasible way to do it, since money only has value through there being a finite quantity of it, is to require its citizens to send some of their money in.

Grover Norquist is a dumbass who makes shit up. But we knew that.

[n2doc]

10. By his analogy then the only thing we can do is inflate the currency

That 'raises the lake level'. I'll bet he doesn't support that.

[quaker bill]

11. More like a stream than a lake

In a capitalist system, money flows toward the owners (the 1%). In streams water flows toward the ocean. Leave the water in the ocean and the land becomes dry. Fortunately for all of us, the sun comes along and taxes the ocean, and then the winds redistribute the water to the land. The bucket of water lands in the mountains and flows to the sea. People drink it and water their crops with it along the way, but sooner or later it all ends up in the ocean again, where the sun taxes it and the winds redistribute it.

The problem with the water analogy is that no one can simply press a button and make more of it. More money can be created, but there are limits.

Sticking with the analogy, currently the problem is that we have opened all the dams, and the sun is not taxing the oceans enough for the winds to make up the loss. The lands have gotten rather dry. The other neat thing about the analogy is that the rich have nothing to worry about, because even if we tax it and redistribute it, they are the ocean and it is all heading their way, the only question is how fast they get it.

[madokie]

12. In my book Grover Norquist is a treasonous bastid

and should be brought up on charges and given his day in court

[Warren Stupidity]

13. This is why irrigation doesn't work.

The water just goes back into the lake. Nothing changed. Where the fuck did all those tomatoes and all that corn come from?.

Did anyone ask Norquist what the fuck "velocity of money" is? No. Of course not. Maher is never actually prepared.

[MrScorpio]

14. Let The Dollar Circulate!

[jp11]

19. I flipped the channel when he started talking that crap

I've heard it before it isn't accurate, smart, or interesting.

I can't stand when republicans/talking heads just shill the talking points you could literally replace most of them with a doll where you pulled the cord and it spouted off a few dozen things.