Income inequality is rapidly becoming the number 1 issue in the presidential campaign. The GOP doesn’t stand a chance if that turns out to be the case. We’re looking at a 45 state rout by Obama over an increasingly floundering GOP whoever the nominee turns out to be. Gingrich with all his baggage will probably carry Georgia, Utah, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina. Everyone else understands the situation and will vote with their brain and do the only sensible thing. Obama has disappointed in many areas (pot crackdown, overally aggressive foreign policy) but at the end of the day he’s our best bet for a return to normalcy.
`Kathryn Fenner
@ bud–from your mouth to G-d’s ear!
Elliott
Bud, I pray that your analysis is correct. I am sure about one thing. The GOP will carry SC.
Bud is totally correct here. We should have everyone in America leveled out. No more of these people who earn millions and billions while other people are earning much less. We should tax everything over $300k/year at 100% and give it to the people who aren’t as fortunate. We can have the Federal Government be in charge of that, and we can also just nationalize the oil and gas industry, because they make way too much money all while keeping us from using wind and solar power. Can we all wear the same color shirts? I think red would be nice.
Doug Ross
@Bryan
Agreed. If we can just get everyone making the same amount of money regardless of how hard they work, we’ll all be equals and live in peace and harmony.
Anyone who wants to be a doctor or engineer can just sign up for the job and get the same pay as the guy who serves burgers at McDonalds. Education really won’t matter any more because there won’t be any incentive to improve one’s abilities.
What I want to see is the response any of you who think certain people make too much money would have if someone lower on the ladder said the same about you.
If they aren’t stealing it, they deserve it. If they are stealing it, put them in jail. If they’re taking advantage of laws written because of payoffs by lobbyists to politicians, well, that’s your government at work.
Bryan, and Doug — who is it who you believe thinks in the way that you are mocking?
I know that Doug doesn’t believe in progressive taxation — something we had a societal consensus about until it suddenly became objectionable to very vocal people recently.
And you know what? Over most of the decades when we agreed on that, the economy boomed. The private sector grew and prospered and created jobs and people got wealthy, and the government didn’t try to take it away from them.
So how about if we talk about that, instead of erecting straw men to knock down?
I find the mockery of progressive taxation even more objectionable than the obnoxious presumption of the “Occupiers” that they are the “99 percent,” when they are not.
Doug Ross
What straw men? Bud brings up the “issue” of income inequality. That’s the real straw man. There has always been and will always be income inequality. Smart, hard working people in niche jobs will make more money than uneducated slackers with commodity skills.
And it’s silly to claim that some period of higher progressive taxation was the reason for a booming economy. There is no one factor that anyone can claim with certainty will create a boom. Anyway, we have progressive taxation now… there are different rates for different incomes and there is a significant percentage of the workforce that pays no income tax. That’s about as progressive as you can get in my book.
I believe everyone should pay some percentage of their income in taxes. It would make those who currently pay no income taxes more aware of the political process when they have a stake in the game.
The problem with our tax system is complexity and loopholes, not tax rates. A flat tax would greatly reduce the impact that lobbying has on corrupting the political process. Throw out the entire tax code and replace it with a couple rates on income (5%, 15%, and 30%)… no deductions, no exemptions, no filing. Do the same for dividend income but reverse the rates based on the length of time an asset is held in order to discourage computerized manipulation and speculation.
Steven Davis
I’m with Bryan and Doug, this might just work. Just one question, will Obama still be King?
Steven Davis
@Brad: “Bryan, and Doug — who is it who you believe thinks in the way that you are mocking?”
“cough”bud”cough”
Doug Ross
@Brad
And I know you like to present the notion that there is some tiny segment of Grover Norquist acolytes who are controlling the world, but it’s simply not true. The tax system we have is a result of politicians who were elected by a majority of their constituents. The system we have is what most Americans have voted for. The majority of people DON’T want to pay more in taxes… yet government continues to grow and grow and grow despite the squeals of Norquist. Government is a larger part of the economy than it has ever been. But it’s never enough for some people.
Steven Davis
Where have the Occupiers been lately, I haven’t seen them at all this week. I guess priorities changed once the nighttime temperatures dropped below 60 degrees.
Doug, where did I say “higher progressive taxation was the reason for a booming economy?” I said that the economy boomed, which meant said taxation did not interfere with people making as much as they could grab.
Now tell me: If you were in a position to decide on economic policies, would you find it acceptable if you had, for instance, only the wealthy and the poor with no middle class? A reasonable elected official — whether liberal or conservative or what have you — would say, “Something’s wrong here?” and look at all policies bearing upon the economy to see what could be changed to encourage a more even statistical distribution. Because there’s never been a safe, healthy society yet that didn’t make it possible to get by in the middle.
You’d look at what sorts of jobs there were in your community. If all you had were jobs with poverty wages and a small group of wealthy among them, you’d try to figure out how to attract better wages for those who need them, and try to make sure that the skills were there for your populace to be ready for those better jobs.
And yeah, you’d look at taxation. For instance: Do you have a confiscatory rate that makes it impossible for a business to succeed? Or does your structure encourage investment only offshore? Is the middle class penalized? Are taxes for the poor so high that many give up on working? What you’d want would be a well-distributed load that wouldn’t tax anyone more than they could afford (and of course, some can afford more than others — and some can afford a great deal and still be wealthy, which is great), but would tax everyone some. And you’d want a good balance between different types of taxes (unlike what we have in SC with our over-reliance on the sales tax). And you’d constantly tinker with that and the other elements until you got it right and saw your economy growing.
Steven Davis
I’d change Doug’s tax code suggestion, by implementing those rates on incomes over $15,000 (first $15k tax exempt)and add a 5% national sales tax on everything but food and medicine/medical supplies. Those who work under the table/cash basis or make money illegally (money laundering, illegal drugs, etc.) would still pay something.
Steven Davis
Brad, are you saying survival of the fittest wouldn’t work? It works in every species on this planet except for humans who refuses it. You provide for yourself, you survive… you expect others to provide for you, you perish.
Karen McLeod
Brad, thank you for the sanity.
Doug Ross
@brad
Sorry… but I could just as easily claim that tax rates prevented the boom from being even larger. There are too many variables to make any assumptions on what tax rates can and can’t do to an economy.
And talk about putting up straw men – do you seriously think we have a society that is even close to two classes (poor and rich)? There is a middle class. Wouldn’t you say that everyone at ADCO is in that group? How about everyone at the Rotary meeting? How about everyone working in the buildings that surround the State House?
What we are seeing in the economy is the result of many factors: manufacturing jobs moving overseas reduced the opportunities for low skilled, low educated people; the education system in America has been continually dumbed down with lower and lower standards resulting in a workforce that has fewer and fewer highly skilled people; the expansion of technology has rapidly decimated entire industries — those able to respond to the changes have mostly prospered, those who didn’t adapt, suffered;
To think that some change in the tax rates on rich people will somehow reverse those trends is naive. You can’t create jobs out of thin air just doing ANYTHING (unless you are the government). What do you propose the expanding middle class could do for work? I check job sites frequently to see what’s out there – there are tens of thousands of open positions in the IT field — middle class jobs. But they require training and skills that many of our younger people are unwilling to invest in (i.e. putting aside the video games and partying).
There is a path to success… but the preference of some is to have somebody else foot the bill.
Doug Ross
Who do you think will be buying the $35,000 electric cars to drive around town? What kind of income would make that a reasonable purchase?
Anyway, I was out on Black Friday eve at a Target and watched thousands of people line up to buy 46″ TV’s, toys, tablets, etc. I don’t think those were the rich people in line.
What I would ask someone who is out of work is: “What can you do? What will you do? What are you doing to improve your chances of getting a job?”
If the answers are “Not much”, “Nothing I don’t like to do”, and “Nothing” — then how much money will it take to reverse that attitude?
Nick Nielsen
“Do the same for dividend income, but…”
No buts, Doug. Income is income, regardless of source. Treating income from different sources as different is one of the primary reasons the tax code is as complex as it is.
If you want to discourage computerized manipulation and speculation, tax the transactions.
“Constant tinkering” is also called legislative government. It’s why it was invented. There is no perfect solution, just endless process. That’s the way of the world. Those who think a flat-rate tax will cure everything also believe in magic. The world is not simple, except to the simple-minded.
Talks about two cities (Austin and Raleigh) where efforts to promote continuing education has helped shore up and expand the middle class. Great quote about one of the success stories:
“Mr. Kanneman, 37 years old, began his working life like a lot of people who didn’t go to college — at a retail store with low pay. Looking to better his prospects at 25, he went to community college for computer training and eventually landed a customer-service job at SolarWinds in Tulsa, Okla., which makes software that controls companies’ information infrastructure like computers and phone systems.
Later, when SolarWinds moved to the tech hub of Austin, Mr. Kanneman went with it. As the company grew, he worked his way into the better-paying information-technology department. A year ago, he did something that he said validated the worth of his new skills: He quit for a higher-paying job elsewhere in Austin, and with overtime can now earn more than $90,000 a year.
“It proved that I was worth as much as I thought I was,” Mr. Kanneman said.”
bud
Actually Doug what you suggest is not terribly different from what I think we should do. Let’s simplify the tax code and have just a few rates, perhaps one fairly high rate for very large incomes but for most folks 10, 20 and 30% seems about right. I would allow low wage earners a pass on income tax since they already pay a huge percentage in SS tax and sales tax. Not sure I see much benefit in taxing a teenager making minimum wage aside from SS.
Let’s get rid of the deductions for most stuff, including the mortgage deduction, and require comparable taxation for dividends, captial gains and a host of other items that are currently taxed at a lower rate than wages. And by all means lets tax inheritance wealth above $1 million.
Doug Ross
@burl
How’s that complex system working out for you?
Really, if you think millions and millions of lines of tax code generated over the past century have made America better, I might wonder who the simple minded person would be.
bud
But back to my original point. We’re arguing fairness here. Fair or not voters are discovering that the rich have been waging class warfare by accumulating the vast majority of the wealth in this country. The more people figure that out the better the chances are for the Democrats. Stephen and Doug can make all the claims they want about the fairness of people buying million dollar vacation homes while the children of others live in cars but the fact is a tiny handful of people are getting very rich while more and more folks, all of whom cannot be lazy or dumb, are living on the street. Eventually that can only hurt the very rich whether they earned their wealth or not. It’s either pay now or pay later.
Doug Ross
@Burl
And there is a distinct difference between tinkering with the tax code and politicians responding to lobbying efforts to reward specific entities with tax breaks and incentives. The motives are not pure nor are the results.
Tinkering is what you do to improve a process. Rigging is what you do to grease the wheels unethically. We have far more of the latter than the former going on.
Steven Davis
@bud – “And by all means lets tax inheritance wealth above $1 million.”
I’m not going to get into yet another discussion on inheritance tax with bud, because he doesn’t understand it.
But, let’s use this example. Why does one pay sales tax on a used car, but not when buying say a used house. What bud wants is for everything to be taxed like a car, and what I’m saying is it needs to be taxed like a house where materials are taxed when purchased, but not changed hands.
`Kathryn Fenner
@ bud–why give a teenager who is not a head of household any break on taxes? They are the least deserving group in my opinion. Sure, plenty save some for college, but they also have the largest percentage of disposable income–why they are so coveted by marketers!
Steven Davis
@bud – “Stephen and Doug can make all the claims they want about the fairness of people buying million dollar vacation homes while the children of others live in cars but the fact is a tiny handful of people are getting very rich while more and more folks, all of whom cannot be lazy or dumb, are living on the street.”
When did I ever bring up million dollar vacation homes? I’m talking about losing family farms because people like you think that the land passed down to the next generation isn’t deserved by them because it has value. Who cares what people buy, there’s already a tax in place for when someone sells high dollar items like million dollar vacation homes and thousands of acres of land, it’s called “capital gains”.
What you’re wanting is for the son of a farmer to get hit with an inheritance tax, then because the son has to sell land to pay the inheritance tax, he’s hit again with a capital gains tax because he profited land that was given to him for free. Where’s the fairness in that? If the inheritance tax wasn’t in play, and the son didn’t sell the land on his own nothing would change except the name on the property tax bill.
Not everyone with property is a cash millionaire, some are on balance sheet but also qualify for food stamps.
Steven Davis
Does anyone truly know anyone who is on the street because they can not find work? If I had to I’d wash dishes 20 hours a day for minimum wage to keep my head above water. That’s me, others would prefer to stand in soup lines and complain on their iPhones that the government isn’t doing enough to support them.
The problem isn’t the haves and the have nots, it more the willing and the unwilling. Sure there are exceptions, but there are exceptions to everything.
Doug Ross
@bud
Hyperbole will get you nowhere. How many people do you personally know who are living on the street? Please connect the dots for me as to how these rich million dollar vacation home purchasers are somehow responsible for the people living on the street.
Steve Spurrier is one of those rich people. Should we cut his pay and see if he sticks around? How about Vincent Sheheen? He’s in the 1% – should we ask him to sponsor a homeless family?
And we’re now almost in the final year of Obama’s first term. If things are getting worse, why hasn’t he done something about it?
bud
Steve Spurrier is one of those rich people. Should we cut his pay and see if he sticks around?
-Doug
If all college football coaches were paid less then he’d stick around for far less money. It’s called countervailing power. If monopolistic power on one side of a pay scale balances the other side then a more sensible pay structure ensues. Let’s take another example to show how this works in the real world. During times of great prosperity pizza restaraunts sell lots of pizza and therefore need lots of drivers to deliver them. But there is a smaller pool of qualified drivers since many are gainfully employed as something other than a pizza driver. Hence the drivers have great leverage in gaining better pay.
Does that make the pizza drivers better qualified during times of prosperity vs times of recession? Of course not. Simply put, it’s nonsense to constantly claim the rich are rich simply because they work hard, they’re smart or have unique skills. They are rich mostly because they have an artificially leverage due to circumstances outside their control. And bless their little hearts for being so fortunate. But to suggest they should be exempt from paying higher taxes because they are so “gifted” is simply ludicrous.
Karen McLeod
Bud, the rich have spent a long time influencing gov’t to make rules that give them leverage. That’s what (I think) OWS is all about.
Steven Davis
Bud, I noticed you ignored Doug’s non-softball questions.
Doug Ross
@bud
So who decides what the maximum salary should be for a football coach?
People are worth what other people are willing to pay for their services. Obviously USC feels it is getting a good deal on Spurrier because of the revenue he brings in, the donations he influences, etc. In fact, Dr. Pastides even said at the Rotary meeting that sports was the “lubricant” that generates a lot of the giving by alumni.
There’s a reason why pizza delivery people make less than football coaches. Pretty easy to understand.
bud
Of course pizza delivery people make less than college football coaches. They are less in demand and more plentiful in general. But seriously a head football coach only makes the huge amount that they make because Universities have bid the salary up way out of proportation to what they actually know. Most high school coaches could do a decent job coaching a college team. The knowledge gap is just not that great between Steve Spurrier and the coach of Irmo High School. But Spurrier commands an artificially high salary because college athletic programs are given way too much latitude in what they are allowed to pay. Since most major football schools are public entities this practice should be ended by the state governements who control the programs. It can only happen if all schools agree the practice is out of hand. Once that happens salaries will drop to sensible levels, perhaps around $150k, and the fans in the stands will notice no difference (except for the lower ticket prices). It’s all very artificial and should be stopped.
bud
And one more point that just came to mind. Given the relatively unimportant nature of college football, it’s an entertainment venue afterall, how does it reflect on the success of the free market? I would say rather poorly. If supply and demand result in a head football coach making more than the president of the United States then we have a big problem with capitalism providing value to the different professions in our country.
Income inequality is rapidly becoming the number 1 issue in the presidential campaign. The GOP doesn’t stand a chance if that turns out to be the case. We’re looking at a 45 state rout by Obama over an increasingly floundering GOP whoever the nominee turns out to be. Gingrich with all his baggage will probably carry Georgia, Utah, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina. Everyone else understands the situation and will vote with their brain and do the only sensible thing. Obama has disappointed in many areas (pot crackdown, overally aggressive foreign policy) but at the end of the day he’s our best bet for a return to normalcy.
@ bud–from your mouth to G-d’s ear!
Bud, I pray that your analysis is correct. I am sure about one thing. The GOP will carry SC.
Bud is totally correct here. We should have everyone in America leveled out. No more of these people who earn millions and billions while other people are earning much less. We should tax everything over $300k/year at 100% and give it to the people who aren’t as fortunate. We can have the Federal Government be in charge of that, and we can also just nationalize the oil and gas industry, because they make way too much money all while keeping us from using wind and solar power. Can we all wear the same color shirts? I think red would be nice.
@Bryan
Agreed. If we can just get everyone making the same amount of money regardless of how hard they work, we’ll all be equals and live in peace and harmony.
Anyone who wants to be a doctor or engineer can just sign up for the job and get the same pay as the guy who serves burgers at McDonalds. Education really won’t matter any more because there won’t be any incentive to improve one’s abilities.
What I want to see is the response any of you who think certain people make too much money would have if someone lower on the ladder said the same about you.
If they aren’t stealing it, they deserve it. If they are stealing it, put them in jail. If they’re taking advantage of laws written because of payoffs by lobbyists to politicians, well, that’s your government at work.
Bryan, and Doug — who is it who you believe thinks in the way that you are mocking?
I know that Doug doesn’t believe in progressive taxation — something we had a societal consensus about until it suddenly became objectionable to very vocal people recently.
And you know what? Over most of the decades when we agreed on that, the economy boomed. The private sector grew and prospered and created jobs and people got wealthy, and the government didn’t try to take it away from them.
So how about if we talk about that, instead of erecting straw men to knock down?
I find the mockery of progressive taxation even more objectionable than the obnoxious presumption of the “Occupiers” that they are the “99 percent,” when they are not.
What straw men? Bud brings up the “issue” of income inequality. That’s the real straw man. There has always been and will always be income inequality. Smart, hard working people in niche jobs will make more money than uneducated slackers with commodity skills.
And it’s silly to claim that some period of higher progressive taxation was the reason for a booming economy. There is no one factor that anyone can claim with certainty will create a boom. Anyway, we have progressive taxation now… there are different rates for different incomes and there is a significant percentage of the workforce that pays no income tax. That’s about as progressive as you can get in my book.
I believe everyone should pay some percentage of their income in taxes. It would make those who currently pay no income taxes more aware of the political process when they have a stake in the game.
The problem with our tax system is complexity and loopholes, not tax rates. A flat tax would greatly reduce the impact that lobbying has on corrupting the political process. Throw out the entire tax code and replace it with a couple rates on income (5%, 15%, and 30%)… no deductions, no exemptions, no filing. Do the same for dividend income but reverse the rates based on the length of time an asset is held in order to discourage computerized manipulation and speculation.
I’m with Bryan and Doug, this might just work. Just one question, will Obama still be King?
@Brad: “Bryan, and Doug — who is it who you believe thinks in the way that you are mocking?”
“cough”bud”cough”
@Brad
And I know you like to present the notion that there is some tiny segment of Grover Norquist acolytes who are controlling the world, but it’s simply not true. The tax system we have is a result of politicians who were elected by a majority of their constituents. The system we have is what most Americans have voted for. The majority of people DON’T want to pay more in taxes… yet government continues to grow and grow and grow despite the squeals of Norquist. Government is a larger part of the economy than it has ever been. But it’s never enough for some people.
Where have the Occupiers been lately, I haven’t seen them at all this week. I guess priorities changed once the nighttime temperatures dropped below 60 degrees.
Doug, where did I say “higher progressive taxation was the reason for a booming economy?” I said that the economy boomed, which meant said taxation did not interfere with people making as much as they could grab.
Now tell me: If you were in a position to decide on economic policies, would you find it acceptable if you had, for instance, only the wealthy and the poor with no middle class? A reasonable elected official — whether liberal or conservative or what have you — would say, “Something’s wrong here?” and look at all policies bearing upon the economy to see what could be changed to encourage a more even statistical distribution. Because there’s never been a safe, healthy society yet that didn’t make it possible to get by in the middle.
You’d look at what sorts of jobs there were in your community. If all you had were jobs with poverty wages and a small group of wealthy among them, you’d try to figure out how to attract better wages for those who need them, and try to make sure that the skills were there for your populace to be ready for those better jobs.
And yeah, you’d look at taxation. For instance: Do you have a confiscatory rate that makes it impossible for a business to succeed? Or does your structure encourage investment only offshore? Is the middle class penalized? Are taxes for the poor so high that many give up on working? What you’d want would be a well-distributed load that wouldn’t tax anyone more than they could afford (and of course, some can afford more than others — and some can afford a great deal and still be wealthy, which is great), but would tax everyone some. And you’d want a good balance between different types of taxes (unlike what we have in SC with our over-reliance on the sales tax). And you’d constantly tinker with that and the other elements until you got it right and saw your economy growing.
I’d change Doug’s tax code suggestion, by implementing those rates on incomes over $15,000 (first $15k tax exempt)and add a 5% national sales tax on everything but food and medicine/medical supplies. Those who work under the table/cash basis or make money illegally (money laundering, illegal drugs, etc.) would still pay something.
Brad, are you saying survival of the fittest wouldn’t work? It works in every species on this planet except for humans who refuses it. You provide for yourself, you survive… you expect others to provide for you, you perish.
Brad, thank you for the sanity.
@brad
Sorry… but I could just as easily claim that tax rates prevented the boom from being even larger. There are too many variables to make any assumptions on what tax rates can and can’t do to an economy.
And talk about putting up straw men – do you seriously think we have a society that is even close to two classes (poor and rich)? There is a middle class. Wouldn’t you say that everyone at ADCO is in that group? How about everyone at the Rotary meeting? How about everyone working in the buildings that surround the State House?
What we are seeing in the economy is the result of many factors: manufacturing jobs moving overseas reduced the opportunities for low skilled, low educated people; the education system in America has been continually dumbed down with lower and lower standards resulting in a workforce that has fewer and fewer highly skilled people; the expansion of technology has rapidly decimated entire industries — those able to respond to the changes have mostly prospered, those who didn’t adapt, suffered;
To think that some change in the tax rates on rich people will somehow reverse those trends is naive. You can’t create jobs out of thin air just doing ANYTHING (unless you are the government). What do you propose the expanding middle class could do for work? I check job sites frequently to see what’s out there – there are tens of thousands of open positions in the IT field — middle class jobs. But they require training and skills that many of our younger people are unwilling to invest in (i.e. putting aside the video games and partying).
There is a path to success… but the preference of some is to have somebody else foot the bill.
Who do you think will be buying the $35,000 electric cars to drive around town? What kind of income would make that a reasonable purchase?
Anyway, I was out on Black Friday eve at a Target and watched thousands of people line up to buy 46″ TV’s, toys, tablets, etc. I don’t think those were the rich people in line.
What I would ask someone who is out of work is: “What can you do? What will you do? What are you doing to improve your chances of getting a job?”
If the answers are “Not much”, “Nothing I don’t like to do”, and “Nothing” — then how much money will it take to reverse that attitude?
“Do the same for dividend income, but…”
No buts, Doug. Income is income, regardless of source. Treating income from different sources as different is one of the primary reasons the tax code is as complex as it is.
If you want to discourage computerized manipulation and speculation, tax the transactions.
“Constant tinkering” is also called legislative government. It’s why it was invented. There is no perfect solution, just endless process. That’s the way of the world. Those who think a flat-rate tax will cure everything also believe in magic. The world is not simple, except to the simple-minded.
Front page of Yahoo today had this story:
“Recipe for Middle Class Jobs”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/recipe-for-middle-class-jobs.html
Talks about two cities (Austin and Raleigh) where efforts to promote continuing education has helped shore up and expand the middle class. Great quote about one of the success stories:
“Mr. Kanneman, 37 years old, began his working life like a lot of people who didn’t go to college — at a retail store with low pay. Looking to better his prospects at 25, he went to community college for computer training and eventually landed a customer-service job at SolarWinds in Tulsa, Okla., which makes software that controls companies’ information infrastructure like computers and phone systems.
Later, when SolarWinds moved to the tech hub of Austin, Mr. Kanneman went with it. As the company grew, he worked his way into the better-paying information-technology department. A year ago, he did something that he said validated the worth of his new skills: He quit for a higher-paying job elsewhere in Austin, and with overtime can now earn more than $90,000 a year.
“It proved that I was worth as much as I thought I was,” Mr. Kanneman said.”
Actually Doug what you suggest is not terribly different from what I think we should do. Let’s simplify the tax code and have just a few rates, perhaps one fairly high rate for very large incomes but for most folks 10, 20 and 30% seems about right. I would allow low wage earners a pass on income tax since they already pay a huge percentage in SS tax and sales tax. Not sure I see much benefit in taxing a teenager making minimum wage aside from SS.
Let’s get rid of the deductions for most stuff, including the mortgage deduction, and require comparable taxation for dividends, captial gains and a host of other items that are currently taxed at a lower rate than wages. And by all means lets tax inheritance wealth above $1 million.
@burl
How’s that complex system working out for you?
Really, if you think millions and millions of lines of tax code generated over the past century have made America better, I might wonder who the simple minded person would be.
But back to my original point. We’re arguing fairness here. Fair or not voters are discovering that the rich have been waging class warfare by accumulating the vast majority of the wealth in this country. The more people figure that out the better the chances are for the Democrats. Stephen and Doug can make all the claims they want about the fairness of people buying million dollar vacation homes while the children of others live in cars but the fact is a tiny handful of people are getting very rich while more and more folks, all of whom cannot be lazy or dumb, are living on the street. Eventually that can only hurt the very rich whether they earned their wealth or not. It’s either pay now or pay later.
@Burl
And there is a distinct difference between tinkering with the tax code and politicians responding to lobbying efforts to reward specific entities with tax breaks and incentives. The motives are not pure nor are the results.
Tinkering is what you do to improve a process. Rigging is what you do to grease the wheels unethically. We have far more of the latter than the former going on.
@bud – “And by all means lets tax inheritance wealth above $1 million.”
I’m not going to get into yet another discussion on inheritance tax with bud, because he doesn’t understand it.
But, let’s use this example. Why does one pay sales tax on a used car, but not when buying say a used house. What bud wants is for everything to be taxed like a car, and what I’m saying is it needs to be taxed like a house where materials are taxed when purchased, but not changed hands.
@ bud–why give a teenager who is not a head of household any break on taxes? They are the least deserving group in my opinion. Sure, plenty save some for college, but they also have the largest percentage of disposable income–why they are so coveted by marketers!
@bud – “Stephen and Doug can make all the claims they want about the fairness of people buying million dollar vacation homes while the children of others live in cars but the fact is a tiny handful of people are getting very rich while more and more folks, all of whom cannot be lazy or dumb, are living on the street.”
When did I ever bring up million dollar vacation homes? I’m talking about losing family farms because people like you think that the land passed down to the next generation isn’t deserved by them because it has value. Who cares what people buy, there’s already a tax in place for when someone sells high dollar items like million dollar vacation homes and thousands of acres of land, it’s called “capital gains”.
What you’re wanting is for the son of a farmer to get hit with an inheritance tax, then because the son has to sell land to pay the inheritance tax, he’s hit again with a capital gains tax because he profited land that was given to him for free. Where’s the fairness in that? If the inheritance tax wasn’t in play, and the son didn’t sell the land on his own nothing would change except the name on the property tax bill.
Not everyone with property is a cash millionaire, some are on balance sheet but also qualify for food stamps.
Does anyone truly know anyone who is on the street because they can not find work? If I had to I’d wash dishes 20 hours a day for minimum wage to keep my head above water. That’s me, others would prefer to stand in soup lines and complain on their iPhones that the government isn’t doing enough to support them.
The problem isn’t the haves and the have nots, it more the willing and the unwilling. Sure there are exceptions, but there are exceptions to everything.
@bud
Hyperbole will get you nowhere. How many people do you personally know who are living on the street? Please connect the dots for me as to how these rich million dollar vacation home purchasers are somehow responsible for the people living on the street.
Steve Spurrier is one of those rich people. Should we cut his pay and see if he sticks around? How about Vincent Sheheen? He’s in the 1% – should we ask him to sponsor a homeless family?
And we’re now almost in the final year of Obama’s first term. If things are getting worse, why hasn’t he done something about it?
Steve Spurrier is one of those rich people. Should we cut his pay and see if he sticks around?
-Doug
If all college football coaches were paid less then he’d stick around for far less money. It’s called countervailing power. If monopolistic power on one side of a pay scale balances the other side then a more sensible pay structure ensues. Let’s take another example to show how this works in the real world. During times of great prosperity pizza restaraunts sell lots of pizza and therefore need lots of drivers to deliver them. But there is a smaller pool of qualified drivers since many are gainfully employed as something other than a pizza driver. Hence the drivers have great leverage in gaining better pay.
Does that make the pizza drivers better qualified during times of prosperity vs times of recession? Of course not. Simply put, it’s nonsense to constantly claim the rich are rich simply because they work hard, they’re smart or have unique skills. They are rich mostly because they have an artificially leverage due to circumstances outside their control. And bless their little hearts for being so fortunate. But to suggest they should be exempt from paying higher taxes because they are so “gifted” is simply ludicrous.
Bud, the rich have spent a long time influencing gov’t to make rules that give them leverage. That’s what (I think) OWS is all about.
Bud, I noticed you ignored Doug’s non-softball questions.
@bud
So who decides what the maximum salary should be for a football coach?
People are worth what other people are willing to pay for their services. Obviously USC feels it is getting a good deal on Spurrier because of the revenue he brings in, the donations he influences, etc. In fact, Dr. Pastides even said at the Rotary meeting that sports was the “lubricant” that generates a lot of the giving by alumni.
There’s a reason why pizza delivery people make less than football coaches. Pretty easy to understand.
Of course pizza delivery people make less than college football coaches. They are less in demand and more plentiful in general. But seriously a head football coach only makes the huge amount that they make because Universities have bid the salary up way out of proportation to what they actually know. Most high school coaches could do a decent job coaching a college team. The knowledge gap is just not that great between Steve Spurrier and the coach of Irmo High School. But Spurrier commands an artificially high salary because college athletic programs are given way too much latitude in what they are allowed to pay. Since most major football schools are public entities this practice should be ended by the state governements who control the programs. It can only happen if all schools agree the practice is out of hand. Once that happens salaries will drop to sensible levels, perhaps around $150k, and the fans in the stands will notice no difference (except for the lower ticket prices). It’s all very artificial and should be stopped.
And one more point that just came to mind. Given the relatively unimportant nature of college football, it’s an entertainment venue afterall, how does it reflect on the success of the free market? I would say rather poorly. If supply and demand result in a head football coach making more than the president of the United States then we have a big problem with capitalism providing value to the different professions in our country.