Who is the wealth being redistributed to?

[tniassaint.livejournal.com]

I find it astounding that so many people seem to buy into this teet suckling mythology. Yes, there are people on public assistance. No - the overwhelming majority of those people do not live large, get wealthy or even WANT to be on it...  The ones that do are rare and should be ferreted out as fraudsters. It's maddening. When we talk the real issue of social aid in the US, issues like what costs the nation more than NOT providing a social safety net, where is the cost /  benefit of providing it, even who actually gets aid... the most direct benefit - things look different.

I paid a HIGHER percentage of my measly income than Mittens... He got a tax deduction for owning a freakin SHOW PONY that was more than my family annual income... for a HOBBY HORSE! And that was one of the SMALLER deductions... And any company that actually PAYS the supposedly high corporate tax rate should fire their accountant as an incompetent. The real corporate tax rate is MUCH lower. We give companies breaks - they have racked up the largest coffers in history, they pay LOWER tax rates (wealthy people and corporations alike) than they have in my life time and they STILL think it is too much tax  - and here we find that ,because the lack of jobs, the shrinking real wages of workers are in decline, people are finding their company provided health care disappearing or becoming absurdly expensive, people feel like they need a small bit of help to get them over their immediate problems in ways that will ultimately help the economy at large...   - but these companies  and the wealth people of this country whine and complain that they pay too much taxes and these teet sucklers are not much more than greedy, lazy sheep. You cannot make these money sucking black holes happy for ANYTHING. This is not what the founders had in mind...

And these founders? They were mere men. They were not divine, they were not smarter than the smartest people of today. They had limitations, for sure. They used the rules and knowledge and philosophy of the Eighteenth Century to answer eighteenth century problems - they did a great job... but to pretend that it was the end product with no possibility of improvement is, well... regressive and illogical. Most people in the US know this is a morally bankrupted belief. It's illogical and a flat out lie. Trickle down economics doesn't trickle down. It is a failed economic fantasy proposed to defraud the masses for the sake of enriching the few. If there is a grand plan to redistribute wealth, then why is the wealth going up those that already have most of that money? It IS being redistributed... but not in the direction you think!

Comments

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Do you feel any better now that you've gotten that off your chest?

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

...and to adress the assumption of the post itself.

Should there even be redistribution in the first place?

[gillianinoz.livejournal.com]

I remember when the 47% tape came out. What made me angry wasn't the crap about the slackers who don't pay tax. It was the fact that the people at that dinnner paid $50 000 dollars to be there.

$50k. I don't earn $50k a year, and I work bloody hard.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Isn't that one of the purposes of voicing one's opinion?

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

That dinner party was supposed to keep 99% of us out

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

You do realize that America was booming when marginal tax rates were at their highest, right? Why do you hate America?

[strivingtoohard.livejournal.com]

First of all, corporations pay no income tax in reality. Taxes are like any other item on their balance sheet. They are passed on to the consumer of their products. If they can't pass them on, people end up with less pay, lower benefits or no jobs at all. Tax breaks for companies allow them to not have to raise the price of their product as much thus allowing lower prices for the consumer and more employment for people needing jobs. Call it trickle down if you want to but that doesn't make it any less true.

The Founders created the Constitution based on the world in which they lived. Obviously, the world is a different place today. However, the Founders were intelligent enough to realize the world would change and if changes were needed in the Constitution, they provided the means to make such changes. The Amendment process isn't easy nor should it be. If it were easy to change, every whim of each Congress would be incorporated in the Constitution. I can't imagine what that would look like.

How TDE works.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Joe and Wendy are struggling, but they are young, and know it is part of life. How can one learn to be stronger without struggle?

So Joe and Wendy save up $25.00. The want to come out to their favorite club and see their friends, who are mostly in the same boat (learning about life, aka 'broke as hell').

The club knows that if someone only has $25, and $10 of it goes toward their favorite 'get away for a while' substances, there is not much left for door entry or a beverage. Maybe...1 drink, shared.

Most night clubs would not even attempt to draw the Joe's and Wendy's of the world, even though they make up 90% of potential customers. Like most corporations, these venues would not waste time with small fry.

One club is different. It caters to, embraces and actively market to such family units.

So on a Tuesday, 1200-1600 Wendy and Joe's show up with their $5 average bar sale. NOW you got some buying power. Time to share the lucre!

From that night's revenue, the club is NOW able to support 35 families with a living wage, and pay taxes that help support the entire system. Joe and Wendy's small contribution, combined with the buying power of thousands of like situated consumers, "percolated up" to Frank in Marketing and Promotions, enabling his ability to buy diapers and formula for his new babby.

This is the only way 'trickle down' economics will work, it has to trickle up; yet, can only go so far and only in a SMALL business environment.

TDE is a grand idea, but it does not work. The wealthy more easily rationalize 'keeping what is theirs', rather than reinvest in his labor staff.

Let's use another example. A corporation came into a windfall not projected as revenue. Should the board give a company a new employee break room in appreciation and to increase worker satisfaction, or, they purchase a corporate jet. Or should they distribute a slight divident to the stockholders first? If I sold the business to a larger, more structured corporate interest (like, say, Harrah's, Inc), I forever lose the ability to arbitrarily reward staff for exceptional performance during an event. I'm taking my money and headed for the beach!

Instead of going to the workers, it would be going instead to cover the profit needs of a faceless leech umbrella corporation in another state or country. They don't care about the employees other than as a number on a spread sheet under COST. They want ALL THE REVENUES!

TD won't work due to the greed factor inherent in humans and the demands of multi-national overhead costs. The real economic engine lies within the consumer base, not the boardroom.

Trickle up, my man.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

but to pretend that it was the end product with no possibility of improvement is, well... regressive and illogical.

And so they made a constitution with an amendment process.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Too many Americans worship the Founders as Gods on Earth, whose every word is as sacred as those of any religious text, and like every religious text ever written to be take only out of context, in order to assuage existing prejudices and ratify the foolish notions of the small mind. Good luck convincing those people that the Founders were merely human and actually designed a text that was badly flawed and failed within 100 years of its being written, while also including a means to change that text. They'll consider you a traitor for bringing it up even if you're not actually from the United States.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And yet we're expected to determine policy in the 21st Century based only on a selective reading of these men of the 18th.

[404.livejournal.com]

You are not responding to his reply:
And so they made a constitution with an amendment process.

You are responding to your own reply below.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Let's talk about talking.

[404.livejournal.com]

Let's talk about not going off on tangents.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That's nice, but that has nothing to do with what I said, which is that we're not expected to remember that the Founders did not see their own document as inviolate nor did they themselves consistently follow it, we're expected to slavishly devote ourselves to a caricature of those men that has more resemblance to hagiography than history. That they designed their own document for editing, recognizing it was inherently flawed, is not usually discussed because the mere concept that they might have actually built something they knew was flawed and expected later generations to actually, y'know, improve upon it seems to be blasphemous to some.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

My point, exactly.

[404.livejournal.com]

Seeing how i was not on a tangent, commenting directly on UL's attempt to derail the original reply...

And you only add snark...

[404.livejournal.com]

Again:

You are not responding to his reply:
And so they made a constitution with an amendment process.

You are doing the equivalent of Dr. Who's eponymous quote "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

[telemann.livejournal.com]

LETS TALK ABOUT TALKING AND COMMENTING, PART DEUX.

[404.livejournal.com]

You'll figure it out, one of these days!

Now I am finished with your snark and derailing, good day.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Adieu! Abiento!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Based on what evidence do you say that? I'm simply noting that the Amendments reflected that the Founders knew their document should be revised. When I go to Church and listen to an hour of someone ranting about how someone was the most evil President ever in the USA's history for merely changing the Constitution you can damn well expect me to be irritated at conservative insistence that changing the Constitution in and of itself is always and forever evil.

If the men of the 18th Century knew the Constitution might need to be changed for the future, why are we in the present expected to adhere to its rigid letter when they both devised it to change and ignored it 90% of the time themselves? Your insistence in focusing on rhetoric and thereby evading the point is of course expected, but then again......it's not exactly easy to note that people can change the Constitution legally and to square this with the GOP's cult-like mentality to the text in question.

[404.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution

The Constitution was last amended in 1992, not 1792.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And that's still got nothing to do with my actual point which is that Republicans expect people to adhere to the Constitution more than the Founders ever intended to do so themselves.

[404.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the hive mind Republicans. Are the same hive mind as the GOP are? I get confused, the RushBeckHannity talking points for the day haven't been beamed into my head yet, I guess.