[CSM] The Big Shift (to the Right)

delete

 

When you use services that would cost you 10,000 or more to obtain on your own.

you're of course avoiding the point - there is no more "burden" to providing a dollar's worth of road ......than there is to giving a hungry child a dollar's worth of food .... or a rich person a dollar's worth of tax credits. It's all a dollar. YOu know that, we know that, and it's fairly obvoius that despite that it costs the same, you find one of these things more odious and burdensome, hence your question.

 

When you make $1 worth of road, everyone gets to drive over that bit of road. When you provide $1 worth of food, it gets eaten by the one person you are providing it to. So you are right that it is no more burdensome to provide $1 worth of road, but that $1 is being divided amongst everyone (possibly to varying degrees based on usage, or not given everyone has the opportunity to use the roads as much as they like). Hence my questions about how one would calculate using $10,000 worth of interstate highways. Your post was not really responsive to that question, but you are welcome to take another crack at it. The "service" being utilized is the construction and maintenance of roads, meaning everyone is a tremendous burden to society under your proposed metric, since personally constructing every road we drive on would be unimaginably expensive (not to mention logistically impossible).

On the other hand, it is clear that you are the one who missed the point. To be fair, I buried it in the third paragraph, but the point was that the wealthy pay so much more in taxes that to be more of a burden it would not be sufficient to merely receive more benefit than the poor, but many orders of magnitude more benefit. I won't even ask that you provide proof that it is true across the board, but how about a single poor person that is less "burdensome" than Bill Gates (even excluding his charitable giving).

 

I disagree about the shift to the right.

I think more than ever this is a moderate country just just realized it made a huge mistake empowering the Tea Party.

It's clear the Tea Party just basically used economic disaster to get what they wanted. I saw a poll that said the majority of those who identified themselves as Tea Partiers were actually in favor of a deal that included revenue increases as well as tax cuts.

Many Tea Partiers felt that they tea party was playing with their money and savings by risking default, and they did not elect them to do that.

This Tea Party is done in my book. They have removed themselves from the rational into being this crazed group willing to put the entire country at risk for their agenda. That is not going to go over well with the electorate and come 11/2012 being identified as a Tea Partier will be the kiss of death.

 

Let me try to cut this Gordian Knot into which you've tied yourself: It's the economy, stupid. A service user's "burden" is meaningless in the context of public dollars already spent (i.e. previously constructed roads sustaining damage or otherwise losing value). What counts--literally, and in contrast to your method, which isn't so much counting as taking a bath in arbitrary data mash-ups--is the demand (as in supply and demand) for public dollars going forward.

That's why SamFisher said, "A wealthy person who uses $10,000 worth of interstate highways to protect their commerce is as much of a "burden" as $10 k of food stamps." Is someone who used $100 in food stamps to feed his family yesterday a burden, if today he took a job earning six figures (and thus paying lots of juicy blood mon...er...taxes)?

Rich people are more of a "burden" because they have more at stake. This puts real demands on a system because they lose more when services they rely on break down. That means a smaller tax base and fewer services for rich and poor, alike.

Of course, you could say, "Who needs those poor people, with their food stamps, anyway?" To that the poor huddled masses reply, "Well, who needs you?" And I'll tell you who the real burden is--it's those danged roads! Always creakin' and crumblin' and takin' our tax monies to pay for their own mistakes (shout out to Rockets Pride)!

Now, isn't that silly?

 

The people don't get a dollar of road; they just pay for it. Some of them might even prefer to pay for more food.

 

First, saying that the money spent on something in the past is not burdensome ignores the fact that the country is deep in debt. Had it all been paid for, no the past would be no burden. The fact is that the country bears a tremendous burden from the past, to the tune of trillions of dollars.

It also makes no sense not to allow the past to inform you as to what the future could possibly hold. Certainly it would be great if everyone that was on food stamps yesterday would have a job making six figures today, but that is far less likely than the same people being on food stamps again today. Likewise, the wear and tear on existing roads can inform us as to the future requirements for repair, replacement, or expansion of those roads. It is only in your fantasy world that the past does not inform the future.

Saying rich people are more of a burden to society because if they lose their money they will provide a smaller tax base is utterly nonsensical. Because they are paying everyone's way now, they are a burden because they might not be able to do so in the future because they have a lot to lose so there is more demand on the system? <- (if you had trouble following that sentence, you understand how I feel about the third paragraph of the quoted post) What does having a lot to lose have to do with demand on the system? Why would reducing their contributions to the level of the mean make them a burden?

I don't know about you, but I assure you that I use the roads where I live. Even the people who don't drive derive benefits from the roads. How do you think the food they are buying is delivered, by air drop to their home?

 

My definition of wealthy in this case is the top 0.5% of net worth individuals, and the percentage of tax they pay is not close to the percentage of the wealth they control with tax havens and loopholes.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin...l-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/

There are people who are wealthy because they deserve to be, and there are those that are because of inheritance/financial trickery. Unfortunately, to become truly rich in this nation, you either have to be a technical genius or you can launder drug money, speculate on commodity futures that push food prices higher, and wage currency wars that make nations suffer (Soros breaking the Bank of England comes to mind). This is especially true of the new pitch of financial products, which often promote a "winner-takes-all" kind of result.

Now, nobody advocates expelling the poor here in America, so stop constructing that strawman. Get the uber-rich to pay a fairer tax rate, and then everyone can all live with the inevitable hiccup of having to pay more than WW2 cost in inflation-adjusted dollars to bail out the things they will inevitably blow up by seeking speculative short-term cash flows rather than long-term prosperity.

 

OK, let's play this game. Let's take person A and call them a ward of the state. They live in a state-owned compound ($20,000 a year) and consume $20,000 a year in food & other necessities, provided by the state, $15,000 a year in education, and $5000 a year in health expenses. That basically knocks everything out they need to live in their meager existence.

Bill Gates (let's pretend he owns all of microsoft here) doesn't obviously need this assistance. Privately of course, he requires roads, sewage, power, etc. and the rest of the basics. Let's put it at $5,000, a very conservative amount....He and his property (let's assume he has a bunch of them) also of course require a few thousand dollars worth of police protection per year. He of course, eats, fuels his cars, and does all the "little things" that indirectly require a functional government, probably much more so than you or I (example, flying a private jet etc) - let's be conservative and say we can get him all the way up to $50,000 - thus far he's about even with our ward of the state.

Oh...but wait, I said he owned all of MS here didn't I. Let's see, MS employs 89,000 value-generating employees. Let's assume that half of them are in the U.S. NOw we've got 45,000 or so people ideating for him on a daily basis. These 45k have probably consumed, present value adjusted, millions of dollars each of publicly financed education, without which they would be utterly valueless to Gates. They of course also require roads, schools, police, etc for themselves and their families, or else they would be unable to work in or around various MS offices.

This of course is just the easily quantifiable stuff. Lots of the other stuff is much harder. A government creating infrastructure that brings people together to generate ideas in a place like silicon valley or whatever that Gates is obviously essential, so we need to think about his sahre of that. Finally his huge global operation not only consumes millions of dollars worth of resources around the globe relies indisputably on the fact that their's an american military/foreign policy etc which has opened global markets to his company and made billions of dollars worth of his fortune possible. And of course his business itself requires a robust system of courts, laws, etc to even exist.

That's probably jsut scratching the surface, no need to go on.

Now, I assume as you re-fight the battle against the caddie-driving welfare queens that are ruining society, the accounting is much different. You basically want to privatize certain expenses ("look at these gov't cheese eating lucky ducks!") and then socialize others ("everybody benefits from a road! we all NEED the army...let's just divide it up evenly per person!") not according to how much use or benefit somebody gets out of them, but however the accounting is most favorable to your side. This would be interesting, except for the fact that it's not.

 

I don't get your train of thought, you are saying that the person who are freeloading off the system is less of a taxing on the system than the people who are actually paying for it? Every body benefit from road, army, school, police, etcs. Let me put it this way, one of the reason why many farmer used to have lots of children is because once they are grown they are a productive member of the family, i am sure the farm won't last very long if all of their kids stay a baby and need to be taken care of forever.

 

Sure - in the example I outlined? sure? why not? Somebody asked me to provide an example explaining the unremarkable position that somebody who avails themselves of more gov't services than somebody else costs more. It's not that hard to understand.

 

Poor people don't need as much police service or national defense costs because they don't have anything to steal or pillage. Poor people don't need as much infrastructure because they don't use as much stuff; imported products, food, electricity, financial services, airports. All this stuff requires public investment and governmental oversight.

The rich even need to provide social services to the poor for their own good. It keeps down public unrest, crime, illness, and preserves the quality of their lives. No one wants to live among squalor. They need to provide education to the poor so that they can at least function as support services. ( I know, I gripe about my Harris County Community College taxes)

I'd like to see the Freakanomics guys write a book about the real costs and benefits of taxes. But what we do know now is that we as a democratic society have seen the need to redistribute wealth for the good of the country as a whole. When you consider yourself a part of something you are willing to sacrifice for the good of the many.

Are you an American, or do you just live in America?

 

I think sometime poor people actually need government more than rich people for example what to prevent someone from killing all the poor people if not for the police. I sure the rich people can have their own private security force if it every come to that.

I understand why many people on this board think they way they do, they have not seen the really ugly side of life, they only live in a nice comfortable country that for the most part is the world number one power, a first world country. Many people who only experience the good thing in life can afford to be idealistic, sure its nice for everybody to have food, healthcare, education and a peace of mind but in the real world things are not what we want them to be. Every child can be anything they want to be, a limitless potential but sometime we have to face an ugly true. Everybody can't be a doctor, banker, or a president we need garbage men, sewer cleaner, and many other jobs that many people will find repulsive.

I am not dislike all of american stand for, but some ideals are impossible to maintain. I know what needed to be done can't never be done in a democratic society, that is why civilization rise and fall. There needs to be a balance between first world ideas and developing world necessities in order to create a balance and sustainable society.

I

 

Yes, having your own private army to protect your home, office, and business in a world with no law enforcement would be incredibly cheap and easy for rich people....only for the sake of the lazy poor people that they have to submit to publlicly financed law enforcement....

 

my answer was to dubious, he stated that rich people need more government than poor people, I pointed out one of many example of government services that everybody need.

And now to answer your question, it will not be cheap or even easy for rich people to have "their own private army" but they will certainly have an easier time than poor people in finding such a thing

 

and i don't know why you have to add the word lazy to poor people, not all poor people are lazy and certainly not all rich people are hard working. But sometime you have to accept the cards you been given, and work with the best of your abilities to better yourself and be happy with the life you made.

In an ideal world, the role of the government should be protect all citizens from harm, no matter if its come from external or internal sources, people should be treated fairly and justly.

 

But basically you are conceding that they need it more than others, aren't you?

It's not really that hard to figure out that people who have more at stake in having a stable, functional society require more protections for their various resources.

Folks like stupidmoniker etc don't want to accept this because it ruins a lot of conceptions they like to push, but really it requires a suspension of disbelief otherwise to bellieve that, if 10 people are in the room, and 1 of them has a million dollars, and the others have 0, one of them has a lot more at stake in ensuring that the room is safe and stable.

 

Yes i see what you are saying but we also have to look how does that one person came to have a million dollars and the rest have none. If you read my posts, i do not advocate against taxing the rich but there has to be limit. I know the reason we are in this mess is because of rich people but even without their greed I don't see how american can continue in the same path and maintain our standard of living for another 50-60 years. We have too many social programs that i find to be very illogical and very easily abuse. I do agree with the poster that stated the real loser in american today is the middle class.