Redistribution of wealth

[angrycarpenter]

I've had it up to here with this accusation by conservatives that putting taxation back at Clinton era levels is some kind of Marxist plot by Obama and company.

These jackals had no problem with redistribution when it was going in their direction. Unrestrained capitalism has no problem with driving wages down, breaking unions, outsourcing, or dodging taxes. Somehow these anti-American activities are seen as noble, patriotic things. Our economy depends on Americans being able to pay their debts. They have destroyed our wage earning potential.

I want it back.

These people have used every tax dodge that American greed can come up with. They have sided with multinationals when they avoid taxes by hiding money off shore. We have more legal tax loopholes than any country in the world. Still they bitch.


The infrastructure of America is crumbling before our eyes, our schools are shamefully underfunded, environmental restoration is almost zilch. These patriotic capitalists refuse to invest in the country that made them rich. They balk at anything that might improve our lives and raise our standard of living. They would rather have third world slave labor than put Americans to work.

These people live the way royalty wishes they could. They give little back to the society that made them princes. Now senator Obama simply wants to put our tax structure back where it was before Bush and they call him a Marxist. Do any of them even think what Marxism was a response to? Royalty and privilege and the inequality that come with it. America proved we were better than that when we did all we could to build a large prosperous middle class. We had no need of redistribution, our capitalists invested in our country and were a driving force in our prosperity.

To these fine patriotic capitalists I put this question, What will it take for you to be real Americans and put your money to work for our country? You've had everything a greedhead could want for the last 30 years and all you have done is find ways to keep it all without having to give back. What will it take before you love this country the way we do and help build it up rather than tear it down? Until the day when you start really investing in the nation that made you wealthy all we have is taxation. You were given tax breaks to make new jobs and you sent our jobs overseas in thanks. You the wealthy went back on your end of the deal. So pay your additional taxes and go stand in the corner and think about how you abandoned the country of your birth for mere profit.

[EC]

1. Well yeah there has to be redistribution

there's no corps without consumers and no consumers with no money...


Isn't that the basis of capitalism? Isn't that what they want? Then the money has to reach the consumer one way or another...

[Connonym]

2. Didn't Henry Ford say something along the lines of it being necessary to pay your workers enough

to afford your product in order to be successful?

[EC]

5. yes... n/t

[eshfemme]

12. Yes. He actually tried to reinvest profits into growing the company through the workers

but then he got sued by the shareholders who wanted their dividends and their money NOW NOW NOW and fuck the workers, they just wanted their money back. Needless to say, it was the decision of that suit that decided that companies were required by law to return whatever profits they earned to their shareholders and not the workers or the company itself. Thus, we get the slippery slope that enabled the CEOs who can get away with being paid so fucking much.

Whatever you can say about Ford, at least he had some basic entrepreneurial skills and some basic tenets right.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

6. Once everything is "financialized" at a high enough level, it is possible

to steal billions and billions without actually making anything that has added value. Modern high finance is a highly sophisticated Ponzi scheme that rests on the "bigger idiot" theory.

[libertypirate]

3. Do you think it is accidental?

Take for instance a president who has claimed a constant state of emergency since his biggest screw up.

Part of the Continuity of Government is designed to stabilize the power structure of our economics. Under this state of emergency the president assumes powers that allows him covert control of a few sectors. The price of fuel is based on the desire to economically oppress anyone who relies on fuel. Which is everyone of us, raise the price and everything gets more expensive. Nothing but speculation has driven the price of oil. It doesn't take rocket science or finger prints to see what is going on.

They burden the people when the people have the will to through the bums out!

[MiniMe]

4. We've had a major redistribution of wealth over the last 8 years

Its time it was restored to where it once was.

[samuraiguppy]

7. we need fairness.

not just here--but fairness on a global level.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Only problem with this is that we need to start calling what we have

correctly

It is NOT capitalism

It is cronyism... use the right term, and start reframing this correctly

[KillCapitalism]

9. K&R

:thumbsup:

[Hardrada]

10. A major. perhaps THE major cause of the French Revolution, was the fact that the

aristocrats did not pay taxes. And the government was running out of money and the idea began to be circulated that perhaps the nobility could chip in to help. They continued to refuse and, as we know, their world of privilege soon disappeared.

[tavalon]

11. Funny, also, how they want to privatize and deregulate everything,

until it goes sour, and then they are more than happy to have the taxpayer help out. Nothing for the average taxpayer when all is well and begging for corporate welfare when it isn't. Something is rotten in America, isn't it?

[Revlon10]

13. kicked and Recommended.

kicked and Recommended

[Stevepol]

14. The argument that Democrats want redistribution of wealth is wholly spurious.

A tax system ALWAYS involves a redistribution of wealth. It IS by definition a redistribution of wealth.

The only question is how the wealth is to be redistributed, to favor the rich (Repubs) or to favor the poor and middle class (Dems).

[Odin2005]

15. Redistribution of wealth is the ONLY way to truly end poverty.

If you try to have a lot of super-rich people while at the same time try to end poverty you end up with inflation that erases all the gains made by the poor.

[Hugabear]

16. Hear hear!

IMHO, we need a much more aggressive system of redistribution of wealth. It's criminal that so many fatcats live a life of luxury when there are so many homeless in this country, so many without health insurance, so many struggling to feed their families.

[Prophet 451]

17. Raising taxes is ALWAYS Marxist

Or apparently so, anyway.

Bullshit, of course but it relies on the fact that the average voter doesn't know the difference between Marxism and communism. Fifty years of Cold War rhetoric led to any program for the common good being labelled Marxism.

The "tax and spend" stuff always amuses me. Discounting the social commentry, tax-and-spend is what governments do; in a very real sense, it is the essence of government. Taking money from taxes and spending it on, say, an army or a national electricity grid or a nation health system (I'm English) is what governments are supposed to do. We might quibble with where those tax funds are coming from but only real idiots dispute that they need to exist.