Wealthy already pay their fair share

[madamesilverspurs]

By Kevin Loesch


When President Reagan took over the White House after the disastrous Carter administration, he had an idea that many people thought was radical at the time: lowering taxes. Although it took a while, the tax cuts caused the economy to rebound and America experienced a good economic boom that lasted throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Reagan proved that tax cuts across the board work.

Today, we are experiencing an economy similar to the one in the late ’70s and early ’80s, if not worse. President Obama is doing the exact opposite and is proposing to raise taxes on the wealthy.

This tactic has been a disaster in the past and today. The states with the highest tax rates toward the wealthy, such as Michigan, New York and California, have two things in common: bankruptcy and high unemployment. . .

read the rest:
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20110418/OPINION/704189956/1027&parentprofile=1025#

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Irony alert: Check out the little squib about the author of this piece.


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[RandomThoughts]

1. There is no excuse for someone to have a billion dollars.

It can not be justified, it is an exploit of the system.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Especially when they're unwilling

to part with beer and travel money.

[RandomThoughts]

17. There is an indicator there.

However the question is more about the just factors of compensation withing moderation.

And there accepting injustice for personal benefit, leads to injustice for many others.



Defeated by happiness

offers of luxury and comfort are very tempting way to turn from what is right.

[Jackpine Radical]

29. There is a slippage in your thoughts there--

You elide from happiness to luxury and comfort. I could as easily postulate that luxury and comfort are barriers to happiness.

[RandomThoughts]

33. Within the context of the statement.

Many are gotten to accept what is unacceptable by luxury and comfort, it is true my comment was partially in context of material stuff like that, I understand it can have other forms.

The basic comment is 'defeated by happiness' where it is some easier path, many times in society that equates to a form of security like money.

My original comment on that was from the movie Braveheart where the character said he would rather have a normal life, a farm and family, that he did not ask for what he was doing, he then did what was hard, but what he felt he needed to do.

I do agree that money out of moderation could cause issues for some. But it is more the concept of selling out, using material form, in that post.

I do understand there are other forms.

[Orsino]

19. If we had the kind of government that would tax such wealth appropriately...

...the available paths to such wealth would be more honest, in addition to generating revenue that could help to heal any damage done.

[dawg]

22. Agreed.

One cannot amass a sum that large without resorting to exploitation of some sort.

[eppur_se_muova]

27. The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac

paraphrased as "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime".

[reformist2]

26. Billionaires are winners of the capitalist lottery.

That is reason enough to explain why they don't deserve to hoard all the money for themselves.

[Cerridwen]

2. 21, works at walmart and is defending the rich. No comment.

Except I think that was a comment. *sigh*

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Wow, I bet that guy's on his way up in the MallWart empire!

Just the kind of article that would grab the attention of his supervisors & get them to identify him as a team player, a RIGHT-thinking American.

That kid is smarter (and maybe more psychopathic) than he looks.

[LiberalFighter]

8. He is probably on drugs.

[rurallib]

4. funny, my memory recalls a rebound AFTER Reagan raised taxes back

Mr. Loesch no doubt believes some day he will be running Wally World.

[JuniperLea]

6. Oh yeah, that 16% interest in the 80's was just peachy!

Only the rich did well in the 80's. Clinton's policies floated all boats in the 90's.

This kid is clueless.

[louis-t]

7. Delusional, brainwashed imbeciles who re-write history.

Raising taxes on the wealthy has been a disaster in the past, eh? Either you were asleep from 1993 to 2000, or you weren't born yet. Idiot.

[OwnedByFerrets]

9. Idiot

[Angry Dragon]

10. Too many lies in the article to make it believable

[orwell]

11. While I agree...

...that you shouldn't raise taxes during an economic contraction, the wealthy tend to buy investment assets or buy capital equipment, both of which do not need more capital right now.

The middle class and the poor primarily consume goods and services with their incomes, which has a significant multiplier effect throughout the economy. That is the demand that is being destroyed right now through high unemployment, financial uncertainty, and ridiculously high and unsustainable commodity prices.

We need massive government spending right now, on a global scale, in the trillions of dollars, to make up for the collapse in global aggregate demand brought about by the financial crisis. Spending should be targeted toward infrastructure investment, R&D, education, healthcare for all (through government insurance if necessary), clean energy technology (paramount), and environmental cleanup. These investments will not "saddle our children with debt", which is ludicrous on it's face, but rather bequeath them with a livable, sustainable future.

The argument shouldn't be about tax policy in a recession/depression. The "deficit" is a mirage as a way to steer social and public policy toward one group sacred social cows. In a fiat money system, deficits are essentially meaningless. We should concentrate on getting people back to work, effectively utilizing our productive capacity, and investing in our future and our children's future.

The rest is just a pathetic distraction.

[demwing]

18. You shouldn't raise taxes across the board

but tax increases on the wealthy and on corporations SHOULD be raised

[orwell]

28. Taxes are misunderstood by almost everyone...

...taxes are a tool that the government should use to direct capital (income and wealth distribution) and to moderate inflation, (drain spendable cash out of the system to cool down an overheating economy.)

The tax the rich or tax the corporations argument only holds water if you are addressing the former, which is to correct maldistribution of wealth or income.

This poses the argument, would any of us care what the rich or the corporations were being taxed if we were doing well ourselves? Try to look at the situation without the reflexive assumptions about the deficit.

The current problem is that the Cons have framed the argument around the budget deficit, which some economists are now realizing is a chimera. Deficits are one of the ways by which money is created in a fiat system. The only two ways for money to be created in a fiat system is for the government to run a deficit or for banks to loan money into creation. Since loan demand is on it's back even though the Fed is shoveling money in to the reserve system like drunken sailors, the major mechanism for the giant gaping hole of wealth/money destroyed in the financial collapse to be filled is by deficit spending.

These are book entry/accounting issues, nothing more.

It's like arguing over numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.

The exasperating thing is that millions of people are out of work, getting sick, losing educational opportunities, over a mirage. And the Cons are gleefully using this mirage to shape social policy.

It is a massive Con job that progressives are falling for hook, line, and sinker.

The United States is not a household.
The United States is not a corporation.

To view it as either, or to apply the same economic arguments that you would to either is fallacious reasoning on it's face. In fact, macro economics frequently acts the opposite of micro economics.

The United States is a sovereign state with the ability to issue fiat money that is freely traded in a floating exchange rate global financial system.

If you want to read and understand more about this read some of the work by Warren Mosler, now running for Senate in Connecticut. It will really open you eyes.

http://mosler2012.com/?page_id=147

[DJ13]

12. Its sad

That kid is already a slave, but he doesnt know it.

[MatthewStLouis]

13. What's with the re-writing of history?

I'm sorry, but where were all those jobs and that booming economy after the Bush tax cuts?

The sad fact is; some people will believe that garbage.

[Zoeisright]

14. What a fucking liar.

Loesch, go fuck yourself. Twice.

[WinkyDink]

15. Clearly not.

[demwing]

16. Two words: Nevada, Florda

• Zero State personal income taxes
• Two of the most corporate friendly, regressive tax structures in America
• And yet - the 1st and 3rd highest unemployment rate in the country

Of the ten most regressive state tax system in the country (http://www.itepnet.org/whopays3.pdf), two (Nevada and Florida) are at the top of the unemployment list (http://www.bls.gov/lau/), and all but three (Texas, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania) have unemployment rates over the national average of 8.8%:

Washington 9.2%
Florida 11.1%
South Dakota 4.9%
Tennessee 9.5%
Texas 8.1%
Illinois 8.8%
Arizona 9.5%
Nevada 13.2%
Pennsylvania 7.8%
Alabama 9.2%

So how does lowering taxes on the rich and businesses create jobs?

In contrast New York and Vermont have very progressive tax structures. New York is curently at 8% unemployment, and Vermont (the socialist state) is 5.4%

[plumbob]

20. Kevin Loesch is a 21-year-old student at Aims Community College and works at the Walmart on 47th Ave

I think Kevin needs to read an actual book or talk to someone alive when Reagan was alivein office (who could tell if that mummy was alive or just a large puppet/).

Interest rates were at all-time highs ( I had a 13% mortgage at the time, and that was not the highest)

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Interest-Rate.aspx?Symbol=USD


He also had inflation raging at 10+ percent

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx?dsInflation_currentPage=2

Highest unemployment rate in the last 40 years

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet


What low tax rates do is allow cash to be held without penalty. A 90% top rate would mean invest as a deduction or pay 90% to the government. Automatic stimulus, which is why the 50s were so good - high tax rates that prodded investment.

There is currently $1.9 TRILLION parked by corporations doing nothing after we bailed their shiny asses out.

There are millionaires and billionaires, including Warren Buffett, who are begging to pay more taxes.

http://www.faireconomy.org/


So Kevin, stay at Walmart. You deserve it.

[HughBeaumont]

21. Wow. Just. WOW. Molesterstache fancies himself a "columnist".

21 years old. Works at one of the worst and demoralizing corporations history's ever seen. Incredibly ignorant of past, present and future. One of my journal entries could blow a hole in this kid's laughable screed wider than my garage.

This article isn't even based in fact or academics; it's just a series of anecdotes, talking points, "facts" that he made up, theories that have long been debunked and off-the-charts Stockholm Syndrome. It kind of reads like a silly Free Republic post; at least from what I read of it. The site it's posted on keeps crashing whenever I try to scroll down.

So now papers have resorted to bringing in student water-carrier "columnists", since they're pretty much the only ones besides Michael Savage that still believe the Koch-huffing bullshit. Amazing.

[kentuck]

23. I guess he forgot the deficits and the recession of GHWB?

Clinton did not carry on the policies of Reagan so how do they attribute the economy of Clinton to Reagan??

[melm00se]

35. in economics

the cause and the effect rarely happen immediately.

the case can be made that (asbestos suit donned and zipped up):

the tax cuts of the Reagan Era freed up the capital locked in place by tax rates to migrate to the nascent high tech industry from which products were developed that revolutionized societies.

Additionally, the fall of the Soviet Union created a large new market for goods and services in Soviet Bloc countries that hadn't advanced much further than the 60's economically and technologically (this is akin to the post WWII economic boom of the late 1940s and into the 50s).

There were some seriously bad things (from a progressive point of view) that happened during the Reagan years but only someone who wants to be pigeonholed as a crackpot ideologue will claim that everything that occurred during the Reagan years was bad.

[Johonny]

24. but Obama cut taxes, I mean he freaking cut taxes

[Motown_Johnny]

25. The author is a 21 year old Walmart employee who goes to community college

and apparently very immature for his age.


Kevin Loesch is a 21-year-old student at Aims Community College and works at the Walmart on 47th Avenue

[L0oniX]

30. Gee ...a rocket scientist who works at WallFart.

[LiberalAndProud]

31. Who should I believe, guest columnist of Professor of Economics.

I just can't decide.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=114&topic_id=87211&mesg_id=87211

[Marr]

32. LOL, that is what we call a "sucker".

It takes a special kind of idiot to defend capitalism for minimum wage.

[TahitiNut]

34. Poor Kevin ... a victim of child abuse, fed a pile of myths in lieu of facts.

Kevin is a deluded, misinformed imbecile without the capacity to obtain factual information on his own. Such a disability is the result of an active and deliberate regime of child abuse over a period of many years.

It would have been better had his parents aborted him BEFORE he was born, instead of afterwards.