Tremendous Upside
Footballguy
Seriously?That's a gossip column, the author refers to herself in the 3rd person, and provides no evidence for that claim, stating only that "Sneed hears"
This is pretty pathetic Stat
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*** Official Barack Obama FBG campaign headquarters *** (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter adonis
- Start date
This is pretty pathetic Stat
NorvilleBarnes
Footballguy
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Pooch
More Yang than Yin
Does it help, even a little, that he's proposing tax credits to businesses that are "not small" if they stop shipping jobs overseas?
adonis
Footballguy
Why is it class warfare to say that the rich have been benefiting greatly from the country over the past 8 years, with tax policy and other situations promoted by republicans to increase their wealth while middle class and working class families have not been helped nearly as much, and that Obama would like to rebalance this tax burden more effectively.It's like a donkey walking with a large pack with lots of pockets through rocky terrain, and with people trying to rebalance the load from time to time as it slips one way or another. Over the past 8 years, the burden has shifted and increased the burden on working and middle class families and reduced on those who make the most money. What Obama wants to do is rebalance that burden. That's not class warfare, anymore than the past 8 years of shifted burden to the middle and working class has been class warfare.Or if you want to consider it class warfare now, it's time for the battle to change fronts...instead of sticking it to the middle and working class families, lets shift the battlefront to the very rich. They're not worrying about paying gas bills, or putting food on the table, or paying for their medicines...lets let them fight a battle for four years or so, and if it proves to be rough on them, they'll come back after 4 years and put in someone else who will take the fight back to the middle and working class.
bigbottom
Footballguy
This issue was raised on the Volokh Conspiracy blog back in March. It's an interesting story, and I haven't seen any sort of explanation.
Orange Crush
Footballguy
I'll reply to the estate taxes part.In 2001, the Republicans passed the Bush tax cuts. Any change in tax laws that results in a permanent change in revenue requires a 60-vote supermajority per Senate rules. Bush and the Republicans wanted to repeal the estate tax, but knew they weren't even close to getting 60 votes. There were even some Republicans who didn't want a total repeal. So instead, they passed the biggest cut that they could for the longest period that the rules allowed - 10 years. So the $1 million exemption for estate taxes was increased to $2M, and the tax rate above the exemption was reduced from 50% to 45%. Then in 2009 the exemption is increased to $3.5M. And in 2010 it's repealed altogether (this is known as the "Throw Momma from the Train" year). But that's year 10, so in 2011 it goes back to what it was originally - a $1M exemption with a 50% tax rate above that.
Barack Obama wants to set the exemption at $3.5M, with a 45% tax rate above that - in other words, he wants to freeze the 2009 estate tax structure. This means that the first $3.5 million that is inherited has no tax paid on it. Only the amount of money above and beyond the exemption is taxed. So say a person inherits $5M, he would pay taxes only on $1.5M of that, or $675K. If he leaves things as they are, then the tax paid would be $2 million.
But Republicans are saying that ANY estate tax is an increase since they are comparing it to the 2010 tax year. If that was true, then John McCain wants to increase the estate tax as well (note: McCain wants a $5M exemption and a 15% tax on top of that, which would sharply drop tax revenue and make the annual deficits even higher than they are now).
Edited to make a quick language fix.
Last edited by a moderator:
Orange Crush
Footballguy
Also, it should be noted that there is a VERY easy workaround that effectively doubles the exemption amount. Say Obama's plan passes, and there's an elderly man worth $7M who wants to give his wealth to his kids. In his will he gives half his estate to his wife and the other half to his kids. The kids don't pay any taxes because of the $3.5M exemption. The wife doesn't pay any taxes because there is an unlimited exemption for spouses. Even if she's been his wife for a whole one day. It doesn't matter. Then when the wife kicks the bucket, her $3.5M goes to the kids, and again there's a $3.5M exemption. So the kids have now inherited $7M without having to pay a penny in estate taxes.
Statorama
Footballguy
I'm not making the news, I'm just reporting it.
Orange Crush
Footballguy
Fixed.
Tremendous Upside
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
Orange Crush, thanks for your information on the estate tax. I still have a problem with it.
First, any estate tax at all is double taxation. The income was taxed when it was being earned, and now it's being taxed again upon death, and that seems fundamentally unfair to me.
Second, 45% of any amount over 3.5 million is still way too high. Most people don't have cash assets anywhere near that amount, but there are plenty of people with real property or businesses whose appraised value might exceed that amount in today's economy. What will happen if this goes through is that children who inherit property will be forced to sell the property as the only way to pay these taxes off. The real beneficiaries will be vultures looking to pick off valuable businesses real estate at a cheap price because the inheritor was forced to sell quickly. That is not the intent of the person who has died. It's very rare that someone says, "I have ten million dollars and I want to leave it to my son." What they say instead is, "I have businesses and properties that give me a steady cash flow of such and such dollars per month; when I die I want to leave that cash flow to my son." Obama's plan will prevent that from happening, and I think that's wrong.
First, any estate tax at all is double taxation. The income was taxed when it was being earned, and now it's being taxed again upon death, and that seems fundamentally unfair to me.
Second, 45% of any amount over 3.5 million is still way too high. Most people don't have cash assets anywhere near that amount, but there are plenty of people with real property or businesses whose appraised value might exceed that amount in today's economy. What will happen if this goes through is that children who inherit property will be forced to sell the property as the only way to pay these taxes off. The real beneficiaries will be vultures looking to pick off valuable businesses real estate at a cheap price because the inheritor was forced to sell quickly. That is not the intent of the person who has died. It's very rare that someone says, "I have ten million dollars and I want to leave it to my son." What they say instead is, "I have businesses and properties that give me a steady cash flow of such and such dollars per month; when I die I want to leave that cash flow to my son." Obama's plan will prevent that from happening, and I think that's wrong.
timschochet
Footballguy
No, it does not, in fact it makes the whole thing worse in my eyes. What he's proposing is a form of protectionism. I know people don't want to hear this, especially in the midwest, but we increase our wealth as a nation by farming out jobs overseas for people who are willing to work for less than our workers are here. No matter how hard unions push, you cannot artificially fix the going rate of labor costs: inevitably it becomes whatever the market says it should be. Any attempt by the government to interfere with this, either by tax credits or removal of tax credits or tarriffs, the only accomplishment is to impede trade, slow down our economy, and devalue the dollar further. I am in favor of open trade and open borders, without government restrictions or credits.Pooch said:
Ray Stevens
Footballguy
I hate the "double taxation" argument. I have a hard time taking anyone seriously that uses it.As for the people that have to pay taxes on businesses and property worth over $3.5 million dollars, I don't really feel bad for them. They're still millions of dollars ahead of people who got no inheritance at all. And probably more than that, because their rich dad provided a bunch of opportunities for them when he was alive that the poor guy didn't get.
timschochet
Footballguy
Sorry Adonis, but yes, your whole response reeks of class warfare rhetoric.Wealth is not a static amount that is limited in such a way that when the rich get more tax breaks, the middle class and poor get less and vice-versa. "Favoring" the rich in terms of taxes is not opposite to favoring the middle class or poor.Wealth is constantly created by the productive and only the productive, and in all cases it represents the ingenuity of the human mind. As such, it is unlimited in potential, if given the chance to succeed without too much government involvement. Most of the "productive" in our country tend to be in the tax bracket that Obama proposes to increase. You can spin that any way you want, but essentially we are punishing people for their productivity- the more productive they are, the more they contribute to our wealth as a nation, the more Obama proposes to punish them. I will NEVER believe in this philosophy, and I will always fight against it.adonis said:
timschochet
Footballguy
Class warfare again. What gives you (or me) the right to decide what they deserve and what they don't? Why is this any of our business?
Ray Stevens
Footballguy
The government needs to raise revenue through taxation. I would rather take the money out of someone's inheritance than out of someone's income. And I have no problem with being accused of engaging in class warfare.
timschochet
Footballguy
Here is the greatest speech ever written by Ayn Rand, and it makes my arguments against Obama's economic plan much more eloquently and clearly than I ever could:
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honorâ Your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made before it can be looted or mooched, made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the Axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss. The recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery, that you must offer them values, not wounds. That the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade, with reason, not force, as their final arbiter, it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability, and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the Law of Causality, the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money, and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard, the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money, the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion, when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing, when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors, when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you, when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood, money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves, slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers, as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money, and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being, the self-made man, the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose, because it contains all the others, the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity, to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted of obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns, or dollars. Take your choice, there is no other, and your time is running out."
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honorâ Your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made before it can be looted or mooched, made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the Axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss. The recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery, that you must offer them values, not wounds. That the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade, with reason, not force, as their final arbiter, it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability, and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the Law of Causality, the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money, and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard, the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money, the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion, when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing, when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors, when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you, when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood, money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves, slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers, as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money, and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being, the self-made man, the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose, because it contains all the others, the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity, to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted of obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns, or dollars. Take your choice, there is no other, and your time is running out."
fluorescent walkway
Footballguy
Jesus christ I'm not reading all that.
timschochet
Footballguy
With regard to the estate tax argument, I pay special attention to these few lines from the speech I posted above:
Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
Gr00vus
Footballguy
Not necessarily, it depends on the type of jobs being lost. You could argue that the loss of low paying manufacturing labor type jobs may increase our wealth (although I haven't seen too many studies actually proving this - the loss of the plant itself represents a loss of wealth, and the jobs lost themselves represent wealth generation loss), but when you move up the job chain there's less and less validity to your idea. Replacing technical jobs with customer service jobs (as we've been doing the last 8 years) definitely results in a decrease in wealth in this country, exacerbated by also shipping technical expertise overseas, making our labor force less competitive. This doesn't even take into account the current race for the bottom you are engaging our lower wage earners in - we're shipping jobs to some countries that have no human rights, workers' rights or environmental standards. We end up paying for that in the long run too, and it currently is not recognized in our cost models.Tim you keep nitpicking things, and people keep coming up with solid answers. You respond with one sided opinion pieces that have little to no factual support for their opinions and try to use them as examples of problems with Obama's policies to justify your decision not to vote for him. I appreciate your seemingly even handed attempt to bring issues of concern to our attention, but I wonder - is there truly a threshold at which you'll have received the answers you seem to need to change your decision, or are you simply trying to feel better about the decision you've already made?Closing tax loopholes for corporations nominally based in the U.S. (who thus take advantage of U.S. infrastructure and stability which all U.S. tax payers float the bill for) shipping an inordinate amount of jobs and wealth creation overseas, while creating tax incentives for those that don't engage in this activity is not going to hurt the U.S. economy - it's going to help it.
timschochet
Footballguy
Just scan a paragraph or two. It's well worth your time, if this subject at all interests you.
krista4
Footballguy
You probably did, in high school or college. In my opinion, Ayn Rand = most overrated author ever.
Fennis
Footballguy
What did Mary Magdalene say when the doctor gave her instructions for birth control?
NorvilleBarnes
Footballguy
Fixed.Orange Crush said:
Ray Stevens
Footballguy
I don't call money evil. I just think it makes more sense to take it from the "worthless heir" than people that are working hard to earn it.
Homer J Simpson
I don't push
Statorama officially placed on Ignore.
I honestly don't think I've ever done that before.
I honestly don't think I've ever done that before.
krista4
Footballguy
He was my first, too, and I didn't like breaking down and doing that either.Statorama officially placed on Ignore.I honestly don't think I've ever done that before.
On the plus side, it does make these threads eminently more readable.
Sammy3469
Footballguy
That about sums it up.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Curious about a couple things:1) Do you favor eliminating the estate tax?2) If so, do you favor eliminating step-up basis?
timschochet
Footballguy
First of all, I don't think I'm nitpicking. These issues are all of extreme importance to me, and I think they should be to everyone. I have already accepted that most likely Obama will be president, and I'm OK with that. My concerns about his economic policy is real, that's all, and I think it's worth discussing and having an open exchange of ideas. Surely this discussion is much more valuable to anyone reading it than more pointless nonsense about what radicals Obama may have once shaken hands with. Those issues bore me; these are the important ones.Obviously I fundamentally disagree with you on what would be the results of closing the tax loopholes. So first, I hope he doesn't do it. However, if he does go ahead and do it, then frankly, I hope I'm wrong and you're right. I would rather be wrong about economics and the economy be helped than the other way around.
Arsenal of Doom
Footballguy
Sorry, but it's not class warfare to ask that people contribute to the country in proportion to how much they have benefitted from the opportunities it has created for them. It's not punishing success or unfarily burdening the wealthy, it is simply ensuring that those same opportunities will continue to exist for the children of the wealthy and poor alike.
ConstruxBoy
Kate's Daddy
He's jumped the shark, irregardless of his cool pictures at :e:Statorama officially placed on Ignore.I honestly don't think I've ever done that before.
timschochet
Footballguy
1. Yes, absolutely.2. I think so. I'll havbe to give that one more thought. I'm rerally not in favor of too much taxation, BB. Government really needs to be reduced to the protection of individual rights. I'm not trying to come off as an extremist here, because I know that with government the size that it is now, it would be very difficult to bring about the type of libertarian society I envision, but that is my core philosophy, anyhow.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
You've admitted yourself in other threads that you're not so great at prognosticating yet you continue to do so here. You reiterate the same questions in response to information people bring to you to answer your questions without offering any substantive challenges to the answers given. Here again, you haven't addressed any of the points I made in my post addressing your concerns, you've just restated your concerns. Why do you disagree? What are you basing your opinion on other than Ayn Rand stories that we could actually discuss? Do you have some data supporting your disagreement? Some economic analyses or studies?It's tough to have a conversation or discussion when you're not making clear and supported arguments - we can only try to guess how to formulate answers for your very high level questions and try again when you find those answers unacceptable.
Help us help you Tim!
bigbottom
Footballguy
Do you favor eliminating all capital gains tax?
timschochet
Footballguy
1. Do you believe these people don't contribute? Productive people create all the wealth there is in this country. Without that wealth, there would be none of these opportunities you speak of. 2. When you say "in proportion": If a man earning $100,000 pays $20,000 in taxes, then why shouldn't a man earning one million dollars pay $200,000? Why should, according to progressive taxation, he be forced to pay $300,000 or $400,000? How is that "in proportion"? Answer: it's not. It's punishing the successful based on the amount of their success. It's class warfare.Sorry, but it's not class warfare to ask that people contribute to the country in proportion to how much they have benefitted from the opportunities it has created for them. It's not punishing success or unfarily burdening the wealthy, it is simply ensuring that those same opportunities will continue to exist for the children of the wealthy and poor alike.
I want to ensure these same opportunities to exist for my children as well. The best way to do that is to LEAVE THE RICH ALONE.
timschochet
Footballguy
YES!!! Boy would that help our economy.
Ray Stevens
Footballguy
What about property taxes? (I know this is a state tax, not a federal tax, but I'm just curious)
Gopher State
Footballguy
very
Obama will be a great president if your on welfare, want free medical care, but his programs will put this country in a tailspin, worst then it is now.
timschochet
Footballguy
I thought I did earlier in my discussion of protectionism. I didn't want to repeat myself. I have stated again and again my concerns over any impetus to free trade. Your rebuttal is a fine one, and I really have no response to it other than I believe with regards to Obama's plan, my concerns outweigh the positives you are predicting. We'll have to agree to disagree and see what happens. As I said, I hope you are right.I pasted the Rand speech because it's so on topic, IMO. Krista may be right that she's overrated; many of her speechs are long winded, and Atlas Shrugged has some ridiculous moments. Also, she is far too extremist in her views for me.
But in this one speech, known as "Francisco's Money Speech", she nails it. It is the best defense of money and the free market that I have ever read. It exposes for all to see what is wrong with progressive tax plans like Obama's.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Well, getting rid of the capital gains tax would solve the problem with your suggestion that we eliminate both the estate tax and step up basis, which would actually result in a tax increase on millions of Americans.I do find the notion interesting that it's okay for the federal government to tax a transfer of money, but only if the person has had to work for that money. If the person has not had to work for that money, they don't get taxed. That seems counterintuitive to me from a fairness standpoint. I also think the elimination of the estate and capital gains taxes would result in unfairness from a tax perspective. A person could inherit millions of dollars without paying a dime of tax. The person could then invest that money without working a day in his life, earn millions of dollars in capital gains off of those investments and never pay a dime of taxes. Then that person could will those millions to the next generation who will continue the cycle and never pay a dime in taxes. Meanwhile, the poor schlub who goes to work every day is paying all sorts of taxes. I can see your argument that this would spur investment and be good for the economy, but it just seems patently unfair to me.
This is one of the reasons why the FairTax is somewhat appealing to me.
timschochet
Footballguy
Well, now you get me into rocks and shoals here.I want to say yes, I really do, but I recognize it's just not feasible. My perfect world would be a greatly reduced government that was completely paid for by some kind of very low sales tax. But I have no idea how to get to that world from here. Drastic cuts in government, arbritarily made, could hurt a lot of people and have a devastating effect on our economy. So you have to be very very careful where you cut. I wouldn't know how to begin. Hiring Charles Grodin might be a good start....
Sammy3469
Footballguy
1. Do you believe these people don't contribute? Productive people create all the wealth there is in this country. Without that wealth, there would be none of these opportunities you speak of. 2. When you say "in proportion": If a man earning $100,000 pays $20,000 in taxes, then why shouldn't a man earning one million dollars pay $200,000? Why should, according to progressive taxation, he be forced to pay $300,000 or $400,000? How is that "in proportion"? Answer: it's not. It's punishing the successful based on the amount of their success. It's class warfare.
I want to ensure these same opportunities to exist for my children as well. The best way to do that is to LEAVE THE RICH ALONE.
the big fallacy in all this is that we're somehow in a free market economy where the rich are punished for screwing-up. As the Wall Street ball-out just showed that just isn't the case. These guys just basically looted god knows how many billions from shareholders (and the American people) because basically they could since the system was rigged in their favor and now you're basically saying they should be able to hang onto that wealth forever because they were "productive" for a year. Really I'm 
commisholio
Come out with your pants down!
Examine your assumptions, Tim. There's a decent amount of research out there showing that a growing economy with the gains broadly dispersed to the middle class (as it was, for example, in the 50s and 60s) is a lot healthier than a growing economy where the growht is captured by the richest 10%, as it was in the past 8 years. There's a group that has been practicing class warfare - it's the rich - and they've been winning. Tillting the playing field back the other way is long overdue.timschochet said:
Gr00vus
Footballguy
I went back and looked, but I'm still not seeing anything but you stating repeatedly that you believe this. The question is why do you believe this? Not Ayn Rand fictional prose, what specific reasons, data, economic models, history, hypothesis support your beliefs? Without knowing this it's impossible to have the kind of discussion you want.
ConstruxBoy
Kate's Daddy
Breaking News......Hillary lost. So Sorry.very
Neofight
Footballguy
More encouraging anecdotes about the early vote, and McCain's apparent lack of a ground game. This does not bode well as his camp talks about pulling up stakes in NM, CO, IA & VA. The movement we've seen in the national polls is flattening out and the rest is money, momentum and GOTV. McCain doesn't have an advantage in any of these areas.Nebraska early vote
Chuck Todd confirms McCain has no ground game
fluorescent walkway
Footballguy
He can't pull out of both CO and VA can he? How does he get to 270 without CO and VA?
krista4
Footballguy
Neofight
Footballguy
Speaking of free markets, a thought-provoking piece was posted by Chris Hedges yesterday @ Truthdig. A choice passage, which I would tend to agree with (but read the whole thing):1. Do you believe these people don't contribute? Productive people create all the wealth there is in this country. Without that wealth, there would be none of these opportunities you speak of. 2. When you say "in proportion": If a man earning $100,000 pays $20,000 in taxes, then why shouldn't a man earning one million dollars pay $200,000? Why should, according to progressive taxation, he be forced to pay $300,000 or $400,000? How is that "in proportion"? Answer: it's not. It's punishing the successful based on the amount of their success. It's class warfare.
I want to ensure these same opportunities to exist for my children as well. The best way to do that is to LEAVE THE RICH ALONE.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200810...o_rule_america/
