The problem facing the left is that the facts are NOT on your side. Redistribution of wealth is a socialist fallacy that has never worked, no matter where it has been tried, because, inevitably, the only way to force people to sacrifice self interest and the welfare of their own families in favor of those they do not know, is through fascist methodology. Hundreds of millions of human beings have lost their lives to their own governments under socialism, yet, this is always the very first preference of the left. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Johg Il and on and on and on. Hitler’s party was named the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Socialism enforced through fascist violence. The “cultural revolution” of the People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Socialist Republic under Stalin, all of these required the centralization of power in the hands of the state, the destruction of academia in order to destroy any possibility of opposition with most being executed or shipped to gulags and “reeducation” camps…this is the mark of socialism. The so-called “cause” of the leftists is not based on history, fact OR balance, as human beings will not act against their own family’s self interest without state intervention through legal means that codify and promote class envy and hatred in order to prevail.
You, and all leftists, seem to be under the impression that wealth is fixed, that resources cannot be expanded and that there is no possibility for lower classes to improve their lot in life. There is no fixed concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few, as there are no social barriers preventing those who have the talent, the will and the work ethic to find a niche in the economy in which they offer those assets to the other participants in the economy. I am an example of this. Until my generation, not a single person in my father’s family had ever completed high school and they certainly did not share in economic growth. Most of the people that I know that have become successful did not grow up as members of some privileged class. They earned what they have accomplished based on the character traits I listed above. I, and those people did not become successful because of some government program that pulled us out of poverty.
Here’s reality: no one would make the sacrifices necessary to accomplish economic success if they weren’t doing it for their own and their family’s welfare. Altruism begins at home. Socialism takes on human nature and believes that it is evil for human beings to be more interested in the welfare of their own family than the faceless members of the state. It starts with a massive flaw that is augmented and perpetuated through class envy. If you were honest, you would examine your own motives. I’ve never met a liberal who thought that THEY should be paying much, much more in taxes. I’ve never met a liberal who honestly believed that they were part of the problem. I’ve never yet met a liberal who would forego deductions on their taxes in order to more directly contribute to the funds available to the government for programs for the poor, no matter how wealthy. You are no different. You consider yourself compassionate because you want to take someone else’s money and give it away. Being a thief does not make you altruistic; it just means you’re a thief.

You haven’t answered a single question I posed to you, yet you accuse me of dealing in generalities. Why can’t you name a government program that has accomplished what it purports to “set right”? They answer to that is one we both know. You can’t because such a program does not exist. You can’t present a single shred of evidence showing that the government’s methodology is both efficient and efficacious, just that is SHOULD be. You think you know history, yet your economic claims were completely incorrect regarding the correlation between the Clinton tax hikes and the tech stock crash. Apparently, him riding the coattails of the economic wave while it was positive was related to the tax hikes, but the economic crash was not. You can’t seem to explain at all, how it’s possible for a business to expand and hire more workers is somehow augmented by increased tax expense. Can you spend more when you are taking home less? If you aren’t capable of that, then why would you believe that anyone else can?
Liberalism IS generalities. It IS denial of fact, and revision of history. It certainly is not the answer for the poor because we have done nothing but give and give and give to the poor, yet the answer you fools always have for the problem is to do the exact same thing over and over again, throwing more and more money at a social problem that has not been, and cannot be changed by the government. If it could be, then why hasn’t it happened? And last, I still would like a hardcore number from you as to how much more YOU are willing to give the government to do YOUR part. If you’re truly successful, then what are you willing to do besides steal from the person who makes one dollar more than you do? Will you commit to not taking tax deductions? If not, WHY? Don’t you believe your philosophy, or is it only for everyone else? I already know the answer to all of these questions and I know why you haven’t truthfully answered a single question. I do know you very much like to talk, but you have no more substance than any other liberal. So, if, as you very smugly and snidely said to me, need help figuring it out…Go somewhere else. Perhaps you can use some of those tax dollars you want everyone else to pay to purchase a clue.

Read that carefully. Your “fact” exists only in your imagination. It’s an associated image you created and judged for yourself, with no outside criteria, which you posit and apparently think I should consider valid . What’s especially revealing is how confidently you proceed from imagination to conclusion. You seem unaware of the illogical progression you make from fantasy to (your) reality. Do you see this, now that it’s been pointed out?

In (real) fact: I’ve worked only in private industry, for companies large, small and medium, never in academia, been a boss, owner, laborer, with and against unions, had both success and failure, struggled to put two very bright kids through college. Now that you know this, do you find my opinion more valid? You shouldn’t. My C.V. is irrelevant to the argument.

Your opinions and your style of argumentation, like most Right-wing dogma today, reflect this fundamentally flawed logic; you mistake personal and group sensibility for fact. And, when you select facts, you choose those that validate opinions that feel right to you. You’re hardly alone, most people do this. It’s human nature. Warm, fuzzy certitude is much more comfortable than a cold, gnawing sense of doubt. But certitude tells you much less about the world. In fact, when issues are complex, it more often misleads.

Your understanding of taxation and economics fits this pattern. It’s Right-wing Propaganda 101, tendentiously reconstructing reality to paint an imaginary picture that many people apparently want to believe in. It’s bunk. If you really want a blow-by-blow on any part of this, let me know, but here’s a book that spells it all out nicely: The Big Con: Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America by Jon Chait. And the huge disparity in the allocation of wealth has very negative economic consequences. Why? Because when there is too much concentration of wealth at the top, our system becomes unbalanced.

Balance, this is the key to a healthy democracy, my friend. A healthy economy needs a balance of supply and demand. A healthy polity needs a balance of interests and power among the many, disparate groups. Humans are given to extremes, especially in groups, and government must mitigate against this natural tendency towards consolidation of wealth and power. Public policy in a nation as powerful and successful as ours, and with such a strong legal foundation, is largely a matter of continual adjustments to maintain healthy balance. That’s one of the tenets of traditional conservatism. Sadly, today’s Republican party, in thrall to the Right-wing, has lost its way and become so unrepentantly radical that it no longer understands this. It doesn’t understand American civilization – or any civilization, for that matter. They see a world in their imagination – as you saw me in yours – that’s based far more on what they feel should be than what is. This is why you don’t appreciate or understand the need for social programs. Neither I nor most anyone wants to support ne’er-do-wells. But it’s a fact of life that we’re stuck having to deal with other people’s messy problems. I don’t believe in pissing into the wind.

The Right disparages academics and believes that the media is biased against it. It’s reality and the way of the world that’s biased against the Right-wing. This is why the Right-wing today must deceive in order to maintain political power. It’s like the story of the would-be marksman who shot first and then painted a bulls-eye around each bullet hole. He didn’t know how to shoot, but it looked impressive to anyone who didn’t know the real story. This is today’s Right. Con artists, charlatans, foolish true believers and a lot of good, ordinary people who, through custom, culture or personal need, can’t help but follow along. If you value knowledge over comfort, you’ll do yourself a favor by looking into it. Let me know if I can help.

Social Security, food stamps, Medicare, welfare, all theoretically should help people to move beyond poverty and into some form of prosperity. But this is not the case at all. You claim that stating that they have not worked is unthinkable because their effects are incremental. That is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to start. At what point have we tried these programs enough to obtain usable data that, considered in the sterile environment of ONLY outcome and effect, will show SOME benefit that matches the intended nature of the programs? The ONLY variable that has changed over time is more money redistributed from one citizen to another, more programs, less oversight, fewer requirements. We have miles of paper, billions of numbers and breakdowns on the effectiveness of these programs in light of the money spent to carry them out. Every single study shows that not only has poverty been unaffected by these programs, it has grown. This is in light of the fact that the poor can access in excess of more than $80,000 in benefits per year. Additionally, the number of people accessing government programs has grown, with corruption rampant at every level. For example, it is illegal for non-citizens to access government programs, yet, nearly all of the more than 12,000,000 illegal aliens in this country receives government benefits that cost both state and federal systems hundreds of billions of dollars.
You have a serious misunderstanding of the basics of supply and demand or are simply applying these principles in error. Continuing on about George Bush. Bush stimulated the economy by decreasing taxes on both businesses and individuals, which added tax income into the coffers because of the additional economic activity. Again, Clinton’s tax increases did NOT result in the economic boom of the 1990′s, they rode that boom until it could no longer be sustained. Bush made a massive mistake, however, in his addition of Medicare Part D prescription coverage. The immediate effect of that fiasco threw a program that was fiscally solvent more than 50 years into the future into immediate chaos. We are nearly at the insolvency point because of the massive burden that this program added to the tax system. This was unneeded. You keep harping about how there is too much wealth at the top. Well, the people who own the top are, by and large, those over 65 years old. The largest growing demographic in this country are seniors over 80 years old. The largest lobby group in the world is the AARP. This program completely destabilized taxation policy by initiating fatal insolvency with no time for a fix. Currently, this problem still looms over us because of the lobbying efforts of the AARP.

Your contention that redistributing income from upper incomes to those with little or no income is good economic policy has no basis in fact. The Clinton tax increases cannot be linked to economic prosperity or else it would have continued indefinitely. That didn’t happen and the economic “boom” was certainly long over by the end of the Clinton presidency. The facts are that raising taxes results in LESS governmental income, not more. Even the god of liberalism, Barack Obama, knows this. When he was running for president in 2008, Charlie Gibson (an abject liberal, but honest) asked him during a debate about the capital gains tax. Obama’s plan called for raising this from 15% to as much as 70%. Gibson rightly corrected Obama’s characterization of this tax as a “sin tax” or a “millionaire’s tax” as anyone who owns stock in this country that makes a profit from that investment, is subject to capital gains taxation. Those that would be most affected? The elderly who depend on their savings and investments to fund their retirements. He then went on to point out that every time the capital gains tax was raised, FEWER taxes were collected. He then asked Obama if, knowing these things, he would still raise this tax. Obama’s replied that he would, because that is what is fair. That, in a nutshell, is why I have a problem with liberal economic policy. It is based on what feels good, is fully committed to stay the course no matter the real results, and tries to characterize any opposition to doing business this way as immoral and the result of greed.

Supply and demand does not work the way that you are claiming. If that were the case, then why not take 100% of what certain people make? At what point does your side admit that there is nothing in the coffers to spend? Why is it that you think that government is an efficient and honest steward of a sum of money that is outrageous? Why does it cost 300% more for government to do the same thing that someone in the private sector does and why is it all right with liberals that government workers make 70% more than their private sector counterparts with less than 1/2 the productivity and nearly zero oversight?

Now it’s your turn. If you can’t answer the questions that I posed, at least have the courage to say it. The challenge still stands…show me one single government social program that has successfully achieved its stated purpose. You need to do a little more studying on economic principles. They simply don’t work the way that you seem to think that they do and you are misusing some very basic terms that were never applied to what you are claiming. Your world may be very simple, but it is also nothing more than failed theory. Here’s one last challenge for you, though. I want to know how much more YOU, in real dollars are willing to pay per year to the government so that they can give it to the poor. And please don’t tell me that you don’t make as much money as the rich. You ARE rich to some in this country and certainly to most of the rest of the world, so give us a number. By the way, I’ve also never had a liberal answer me on that one, either, without stating that they are talking about the top earners paying more, and I’m not anticipating that you will be any different, but maybe I’ll hear something different this time.

Now, how about addressing the elephant in the room (pun intended)? Taxes were raised in 1993 under Clinton, and every single Republican/conservative/supply side adherent declared it would lead to stagnation at best and more likely to ruin. The opposite happened, didn’t it? The economy boomed, and the deficit was tamed. Then the wealthy were given enormous tax decreases under Bush. My side of the argument said this would throw us back into a structural deficit and lead to greater income inequality, which would in turn unbalance the supply & demand equation. Who was right? The results of our national experiment with different tax theories should be over. Your side lost, very badly. It’s perverse that the Right hasn’t learned its lesson and continues to attack as if it were somehow vindicated instead of humiliated.
The basics of supply and demand cannot be altered. There is excessive wealth at the top, as a direct result of Right-wing policies that benefit the very few at the expense of everyone else. This money cannot be used as productively as it would be if it were in the pockets of the middle class. Like it was in the Clinton economy. Like it was during the entire post-WWII boom. With supply and demand unbalanced, our economy limps along. The Right’s failure to submit, not to the Left, but to reality, is what’s causing our troubles today.

But since you ask – the relationship between my views on tax policy and those of the majority of taxpayers would depend on the specific policy in question. The majority of voters, at least, seems to favor higher taxes on the wealthy, as I do.

“It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses”

“It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”