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Republicans for taxing the poor

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TheEgoist

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Perhaps a bit of 5th grade math (exponents as applied to the idea of compound interest) would lead you, as it has many "Tea Party"-types, to understand that raising the debt ceiling is merely kicking the can down the road. Every additional dollar of debt adds to the pain that this economy will face when the chickens inevitably come home to roost.

Just as A is A, debt will need to be repaid or cleared. This will always entail some pain, but it does not have to mean the collapse of the entire system. Adding to the debt pile increases the odds of that happening.

Sorry, I find your post confusing... which person are you addressing?

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is about the payroll tax cuts they are refusing to renew, right?

As long as abolishing SS isn't a viable option (and it isn't right now, because almost everyone is against it), the options are to collect money from the people who are the intended beneficiaries, or from people who aren't (allocate money from the general budget to bail it out). Clearly, the first option is the more reasonable one.

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However, you do seem to be agreeing with what the GOP is saying about hiring >>right now<<< (am I correct in that?)
I agree with these things:

  • lower unemployment insurance (lower amount, duration, or both)
  • raise payroll-taxes back to where they were until the recent moratorium
  • cut government spending
  • kill Obamacare

All too often, I hear GOP politicians saying tax-cuts will grow the economy out of the slump. I disagree.

The big problem with the GOP is that they suggest these things as if they will boost the economy. They don't mention that there will be more pain in the short run. It is far more likely that these will deepen the recession for at least a couple of years. Enacting such measures is likely to raise the unemployment rate and drop the stock-market for a while. In a sense, the economy needs the recession to deepen if it is to shorten.

I should add that any pain could be relieved if the government rolls back all sorts of rules and regulations and does so in a way that makes such freedom long-term. However, U.S. voters will never go for that. So, among the politically feasible solutions, I tend to favor the ones that will deepen the short term pain, with the payoff of shortening its duration.

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You have it wrong. It just makes lees sense to tax the lower class, because so little will be achieved and it will inflict more damage. I'm not for taxing anyone ever for anything.

Whilst this is true, it should also be mentioned that, if raising revenue for government expenditure is the goal, then taxing the rich at the rates demanded by the left wing advocates of extreme progressive taxation also do not achieve this goal and make every bit as less sense as taxing the poor, because those rates would fall in the "prohibitive" range of the Laffer curve. Of course, the real goal is the satisfy class-hatred and vindictiveness, the same as the Rep's here who demand "skin in the game" intend.

Either way, to Objectivists, the fact that the government will receive less revenue isn't actually a point against taxing the poor, but would be a point in favor of it, if anything. Just saying. But of course, ultimately, increasing governmental aggression on any group would be totally unacceptable, so the only conclusion should be to oppose lifing any tax breaks (including loopholes) on anyone in any group for any reason. But if we should somehow face the alternative of taxing the poor slightly more versus taxing everyone else much less (not that that's an option here), we would have a dilemma of clashing interests, and appealing to the fact that the government will have less money wouldn't actually work as a counterpoint.

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I agree with these things:

  • lower unemployment insurance (lower amount, duration, or both)
  • raise payroll-taxes back to where they were until the recent moratorium

So, in essence you are agreeing with the GOP on this issue.. since lowering unemployment would be a cut on the employer side & putting payroll taxes back to where they were would be raising on the employee side..?

I absolutely agree with you that members of the GOP who believe tax cuts for the sake of tax cuts will grow the economy are wrong. But I do believe that lessening the back-end government graft expense of hiring would increase the rate at which people hire.

And it does well to note as I pointed out before that the employer end of payroll taxes varies by state and even city. A creeping trend that has reached my state is that employees who quit their jobs can now be eligible for unemployment. It is not uncommon here for people to quit their jobs then use unemployment as a paid summer vacation. In the meantime, the employer's unemployment tax shoots up. The examples of how these employer side costs hinder job growth are numerous.

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It seems mean and politically suicidal, but... what would you have the GOP do in terms of economic policy? Raise taxes? If so, where to focus? Cut spending? If so, where to focus?

Begin weening the country off of the social safety net, cut needless defense spending, end our 5 theaters of wars and not-wars. These are the two big areas that take up way more space than they need, especially the social safety nets. We can also raise revenues by selling off government property to private landowners.

Honestly, I'm surprised so many people gave my OP a negative vote. I would like to understand what is objectionable in not wanting to fuck over the poor anymore than we already have. Many who make under $40000 need most of the money they make. It's not like they're skating by. It's disgusting to say raise taxes on anyone, but it's disgusting and even more absurd when you say raise it on the people who need the money the most.

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Begin weening the country off of the social safety net, cut needless defense spending, end our 5 theaters of wars and not-wars. These are the two big areas that take up way more space than they need, especially the social safety nets. We can also raise revenues by selling off government property to private landowners.

Honestly, I'm surprised so many people gave my OP a negative vote. I would like to understand what is objectionable in not wanting to fuck over the poor anymore than we already have. Many who make under $40000 need most of the money they make. It's not like they're skating by. It's disgusting to say raise taxes on anyone, but it's disgusting and even more absurd when you say raise it on the people who need the money the most.

Yes, and it's important to think of this as "war" (an analogy), not peace. Everybody in the USA is under attack by taxes. Nobody deserves that. In war you make trade-offs to protect your population, which may involve diverting the attack to those whom would be less effected by the attack. This is not about rewarding mediocrity or punishing the successful, it's about surviving a bad situation.

As I alluded to in a previous post, rational people who make life the standard of value should have every interest in a path to change that doesn't simply crush people because after living a lifetime in a welfare state they "should have known". So yes, one good way to put is, "(slowly, carefully) ween the country off the welfare state", not "liquidate the poor".

OP

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Honestly, I'm surprised so many people gave my OP a negative vote. I would like to understand what is objectionable in not wanting to fuck over the poor anymore than we already have. Many who make under $40000 need most of the money they make. It's not like they're skating by. It's disgusting to say raise taxes on anyone, but it's disgusting and even more absurd when you say raise it on the people who need the money the most.

In the long-term, the poor fuck themselves over by asking for the rich to be taxed more. In the long-term, the rich make the poor richer, not the other way around. In fact, the poor would be even better off if the rich were not taxed at all -- in net, on both sides, of course.

Maybe those responding negatively toward your post don't understand why you're targeting just one side of the tax theft, instead of simply targeting tax itself. It has the ring to it: "To each according to his need."

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Its because your OP sounds like a liberal/leftist spew.

If we want that we can go to the mainstream media.

(...)

Maybe those responding negatively toward your post don't understand why you're targeting just one side of the tax theft, instead of simply targeting tax itself. It has the ring to it: "To each according to his need."

Or maybe many people here don't even read the contents of posts and just glean a "feeling" from them and instantly react to them without any kind of subtle thinking through of the matter.

If we want knee-jerk reactions like this to events we can in fact go to the mainstream media, which is to say Fox News.

OP

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Or maybe many people here don't even read the contents of posts and just glean a "feeling" from them and instantly react to them without any kind of subtle thinking through of the matter.

If we want knee-jerk reactions like this to events we can in fact go to the mainstream media, which is to say Fox News.

I read the posts, and I even agree with yours. Not sure what your point is here. How would one glean a feeling from a post without reading it, anyway? Even if one read only the title of this thread, not much of a feeling could be gleaned, which would then require a reading of the post contents. You have a pretty low opinion of the users in this thread if you think they can acquire new information enough to develop feelings from it, then to willfully ignore the new information they acqurie.

Then, what is even wrong with gleaning a feeling from information one learns? This naturally happens with all information one acquires, always.

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In the long-term, the poor fuck themselves over by asking for the rich to be taxed more. In the long-term, the rich make the poor richer, not the other way around. In fact, the poor would be even better off if the rich were not taxed at all -- in net, on both sides, of course.

Maybe those responding negatively toward your post don't understand why you're targeting just one side of the tax theft, instead of simply targeting tax itself. It has the ring to it: "To each according to his need."

But most poor people are not just looking for a handout. This is a crazy generalization. Poor people have no more inherent worth or disworth than the rich.

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But most poor people are not just looking for a handout. This is a crazy generalization. Poor people have no more inherent worth or disworth than the rich.

This thread is based on a generalization, and really, a generalization is appropriate since we're talking about taxing and the economy as a whole.

In net, poor people do have less "inherent" worth than rich people. Not worth in the sense of political rights, but rather less money and value-creating potential. Literally, poorer people have less monetary worth at present, but in terms of growing the economy, they also have less worth. It takes money and resources to make more money and more resources. Rich people have more working capital with which to make that happen. They are also likely better at making money than poor people, which is what their wealth suggests.

Again, in net -- there are poor people who don't want handouts, who are hard workers, and who may have the potential to add value to an economy as well as rich people. Likewise, there are rich people who maybe inherited their wealth, or who simply want to spend earned wealth instead of investing it, who do not contribute much to a growing economy. But the point stands that rich people add more value to society than do poor people. They are "inherently" better in that regard, and so if we are talking about who is worse off when picking which side to tax more, it is: we are all worse off with higher tax rates on the rich -- in net!

But, I don't want this to seem like I believe it is a good policy to tax one side or the other. Taxing should never happen on either side, and it's equally important, but on a political level, not an economic one. Of course, politics and economic policy exist together in everyone's lives, and better policies in one will necessarily lead to better results in the other, just not as directly.

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Begin weening the country off of the social safety net, cut needless defense spending, end our 5 theaters of wars and not-wars. These are the two big areas that take up way more space than they need, especially the social safety nets. We can also raise revenues by selling off government property to private landowners.

Honestly, I'm surprised so many people gave my OP a negative vote. I would like to understand what is objectionable in not wanting to fuck over the poor anymore than we already have. Many who make under $40000 need most of the money they make. It's not like they're skating by. It's disgusting to say raise taxes on anyone, but it's disgusting and even more absurd when you say raise it on the people who need the money the most.

One of the negative votes is mine. The gist of the reason is that you are adopting the class warfare paradigm when it suits your argument, but expecting the Tea Party to ignore it and only think in terms of individuals.

The fact is, class warfare is real. And it isn't initiated by the rich, they are being victimized by excessive taxation. And they are victimized not by some authoritative king, but by the vast majority of the electorate.

In the situation the Tea Party caucus is in (in which eliminating the welfare state is impossible for them -fact which you are also ignoring), limiting the liability of the minority the majority are intending to force to pay for all the excessive spending is the right thing to do. If that means spreading the pain around, so be it.

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Or maybe many people here don't even read the contents of posts and just glean a "feeling" from them and instantly react to them without any kind of subtle thinking through of the matter.

If we want knee-jerk reactions like this to events we can in fact go to the mainstream media, which is to say Fox News.

OP

Perhaps Optimized Prime doesn't realize my "knee jerk reaction" (it wasn't knee-jerk as I will show below) was to the post (which looked knee jerk leftist) not the event. Looks like he might be conflating the two since he starts off attacking people for reactions to the post but then complaining that the reactions of the posts' critics to the event were knee-jerk suitable for Fox News.

It so happens I did read the contents of the post. Let me remind you of the context when judging that post:

http://www.nytimes.c...or.html?_r=1

Leave it to the Republicans, including the head of the moronic Tea Party Caucus to not support taxation of the rich but to be fine with taking some money from the poor. Because taking the last pennies people have will do a lot, but taxing the rich more would never help the country!

This is just reverse class warfare.

As for the post, it was a short read. And as JASKN pointed out when Egoist wanted to know why people downvoted it, he indeed attacked only the one side of the issue... the same side, and in the same words, and with the same vitriol, as the Left does. That longest (and only substantive) paragraph could have come straight off of Daily Kos. If Egoist wants to do an analysis of a story that looks just like a Leftist one he can expect people to react to that analysis the same as they would a Leftist one.

Tacking on a reference to reverse class warfare only tells us that he is aware of the concept of class warfare, not whether he condemns it as well. And in the context of following that previous one, that sentence meant I was reading a Daily Kos type spew by someone who is aware of Republican/Conservative rhetoric (calling what the Left does when it beats up on the rich "class warfare") and wants to call them hypocrites--also something a Daily Kos-er would happily do.

So yeah, I am going to react negatively to a post like this, but NO I deny flatly that this was a "surface impression" or a "knee jerk reaction". That the OP was merely leftist vomitus is a perfectly reasonable conclusion one could come to from that context. The OP itself showed none of the "subtle thinking through of the matter" that Optimized Prime seems to think the downvoters lacked.

To be sure when challenged on his OP The Egoist did show some better thinking and for this I commend him. If he had done this in the first place there would have been no issue. But if he wants to know why his original post was condemned (and he did ask), it's because it looked like a lefty temper tantrum, not an O-ist one, much less a "subtle thinking through of the matter."

Edited by Steve D'Ippolito
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Optimized Prime,

Possible source of confusion: In my post OP stood for "Original Post" (by The Egoist) whilst I was careful to spell out the name Optimized Prime, when I was addressing you. I was criticizing the "Original Post", not "Optimal Prime", as looking like leftist spew.

Though I tend to disagree with you a lot, O(ptimized) P(rime), you don't post in leftist soundbites.

If you think by any chance I may have written OP as an abbreviation for "Optimized Prime" rather than "Original Post" somewhere, let me know and I'll clarify my intent.

Edited by Steve D'Ippolito
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