While I think it is totally appropriate to ask the 1% to pay more; (and recent polls of millionaires show that 66% of them AGREE that they should be paying more), it's about stopping the obscene tax structure that keeps screwing the middle and lower classes while juggling the rules so that the top keeps getting to keep more while transferring the burden.
Trickle-down/supply-side/ "job-creator" bullsh*t aside, it doesn't work. If tax cuts worked, then there would be zero unemployment. If tax cuts works, then where are jobs that should have been created during the 8 years of Bush's presidency? (since he only created 1 million)... And Clinton created 23.1 million with the pre-tax-cut rates? You can launch into your standard apologist spin and turns to explain that away...but the facts are the facts.
I doubt LJ read the OP article. This is not about taxes, which everyone agrees need reform. It is about class warfare vs class upward mobility. But it did offer an opportunity to throw out the phrase "trickle down".
If you want to be, press one. If you want not to be, press 2
Republicans are red, democrats are blue, neither of them, gives a flip about you.
Social mobility is addressed at the 8:35 mark. Without looking at the metrics used to measure "upward mobility" in each, it's difficult to say which one more accurately reflects reality.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
Social mobility is addressed at the 8:35 mark. Without looking at the metrics used to measure "upward mobility" in each, it's difficult to say which one more accurately reflects reality.
INdeed. I did find the lecture thought provoking. However, there is little need to have a multitude of measures that show crime, etc. is higher in places with income inequality since if there is no inequality there is no envy, no point of different comparison or realization just what things could be like. To me this issue is seen in community ecology. Nature never fits community parameters under a narrow band under the bell shaped curve. It tolerates, perhaps even needs, the deviations from the norm to evolve. it's the deviants who promote change, whereas the norm promotes stability through little or no evolutionary change. I suppose what I'm trying to say is the extremes force changes that you would not get if they did not exist. Now depending on your perspective, you may or may not want change or to evolve to something better.
Rockdoc Franz wrote: It's not a matter of taxation as you seem to want to think LJ.
And thank you so much for enlightening me on what you think I responded to.
That is incorrect. I posted after you posted your tax tirade, which we have heard about at nauseam. Again no original thought or even your own thought, just another talking point you've been delivering on another's behalf. You brought up the tax issue and my response to that is not what you cherry picked above. The gist of my point was not taxation but the fact that there are fundamental differences between human beings. That they are not all created equally. Had we been we would all be billionaires, or paupers. That is what I was saying while you insist that we need to tax the wealthy. I really could care less about what polls say about taxing the wealthy. That is hardly a revelation. Everyone from you to a billion other poor folks want some of the wealthy's money by redistributing it among the rest of the "poor".
The talk was actually thought provoking. Had you, LJ, taken time to listen to it, you would have had a whole lot more talking points. The point of it is that there are many different ways to correlate and measure society strength.. whatever that means. Perhaps if we are going to address the strength of a society we ought to look at the rate of innovation or contributions that a particular society makes toward moving mankind forward? Sweden and Japan both are model examples of societies where there is more equality than in the US based on the parameters that were considered to weaken a society. Perhaps it would be prudent to turn the whole thing around and look at it from the standpoint of strengthening a society. It's not just the inverse of weakening. I do not recall Sweden being in the news much for its contributions to advance society much, Japan more so. To me, equality equates with mundane, the sameness, stifling, giving up hope, and tiling without having dreams. You need look no further than former E. Germany as an example. Yep, they had equality, security and a bowl of soup for dinner guaranteed each day. That society lived in yesterday and when the unification happened, it took years for them to catch up with all the innovations that had taken place outside their society structure. Like getting wealthy, you need to take a few risks along the way. The same can be said for society to evolve and move forward, it needs to be able to take a few risks along the way. Those risks and ability to move forward come from the areas outside the statistical norms, not from the inside equal classes. Another comparison would be genetic diversity. It's the extremes that are as important and perhaps more so to deal with environmental changes. It does not weaken the species it strengthens it. Class warfare, a struggle toward equality, sameness, genetic uniformity, will never strengthen a society in the long term.
Right or wrong that at least is how I see things. Original critical dialog on on such a perspective is welcomed. I'm not much interested in taking points.
