No Way Would This Happen Here

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8212 Location: Central CA

I can't even imagine rich Americans doing something like this. And no, this is not an Onion article... it's straight from the BBC. How many of you can picture Eddie Lampert organizing something of this nature? Wink

Rich Germans demand higher taxes

Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 269

Our whole system is broken. The Dow hits 11k, yet the two biggest indicators of main street's health, retail sales, which are continuing to trend downward showing main street has no money to spend, and unemployment continues to rise, showing that money being collected in the offering plates on Wall Street definately isn't "trickling down".

Unfortunately something like this would never fly here. Our richest are too busy looking for ways to evade taxes.

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8212 Location: Central CA

As long as Wall Street is doing well, our fearless leaders really don't care about Main Street. They'll claim that the economy is good necause people are making more money. They see nothing wrong with the fact that it's more money alright... it's just being made by fewer and fewer people every month.

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 6045

I don't know what to think about this yet except I know Germany between the old liberal west and the old commie east are ripe for socialism.

Yes the rich need to pay more but I'd rather see tax loopholes plugged rather than forcing those with more to give it up.

It's the spirit of the move I think.

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8212 Location: Central CA

But when you look at all those off shore tax shelters... around which a rather lucrative industry has been built incidentally... that allow thousands of America's richest to escape paying most if not all their taxes and the fact that many of America's largest companies pay little to no taxes annually, it's obvious that the loopholes are not going to closed in your lifetime.

Look at all the hulabaloo when the story came out about the thousands of Americans who were hiding money in Switzerland and Lichtenstein... any convictions or confiscations? How about the disclosure of American tax dodgers at the Swiss bank RBS? Have you heard of anybody being tagged for back taxes?

Far too many of the people charged with administering our system of taxes and revenues benefit also from the evasion of existing taxes by people who are willing to spend money for the sole purpose of keeping the government from getting any of their often ill gotten gains. The name Phil Gramm ring any bells?

We've become a country based almost solely in greed and corruption among the ruling class who are the only ones with the wherewithal to spend a million bucks to keep from paying two million in taxes.

A loit of people will look you right in the eye and tell you that the rich one percent of the populatrion pay 50% of the taxes in the country. That's bullshit. They may be OBLIGATED for over 50% of the taxes but there's a vast difference between what they're obligated to pay and what they actually pay.

And if they DID pay 50% of the taxes... what the hell's wrong with that? They control over 50% of the wealth... indeed that one percent controls more of the country's wealth than the bottom NINETY FIVE percent combined.

And in the last 14 months we've stood slackjawed and watched some of the same people who are on that RBS or client list... some of the same companies that... thanks to those Cayman Island fronts they've set up and which we have discussed many times here... paid little to no corporate income taxes during that same 14 month period, load up on somewhere around a trillion bucks of public money, courtesy of the 95% who DO pay their taxes because they can't afford expensive politicians to write enabling legislation for them or to gut the regulatory agencies that might have stopped some of these practices before they became standard operating procedure.

Depending on big business, a corrupt nobility and a totally corrupt government bureaucracy to do what's right might work in an ideal world but we don't live in an ideal world and we're reaping what we've been sowing since at least 1980. Might as well have turned the damned country over to organized crime and frankly, there are times when I can't help but feel that's exactly what we've done.

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 6045

Onething they definately have to plug is a corporation making BILLIONS only pay taxes at 1% ie GoldmanSachs 2008 tax rate. Or hedgefund managers pay the capital gains rate of 15% when it should be 35% regular income tax rate.

Why do Goldman and hedgefunds keep popping up together?

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8212 Location: Central CA

Lots and lots of loopholes like that. It's one of the reasons only the rich or the bought and paid for can afford to run for office these days. The whole vicious circus is self sustaining in that only the rich can afford to "serve" and with only about three exceptions I can think of off the top of my head, they're only interested in serving the rich.

The only people who might want to change the status quo are those who are systematically being left out of the system and the PTB make damned sure none of them could afford to run for dogcatcher, let alone run a multi million buck campaign for any national office.

That old crap about "anybody can grow up to be president" went out with Harry Truman and even he only got to the White House by accident of succession and he only hung onto the office through incumbency.

Joined: 22 Dec 2007 Posts: 445

Actually there are some in the USA that do ask for higher taxes but this takes a bit to explain.

There is a book called What's the Matter with Kansas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F

For most points and intentions people in Kansas would benefit more from democrats than republicans. These are people for the most part with less income and would gain from social programs. Well they tend to vote Republican at least for quite some time. However on the same point in the northeast often times you'll see rich celebrates that advocate for higher taxes (Ben Afflac, Matt Daemon...heck most of Hollywood is to the left) Now obviously these people would gain more by republicans than democrats since these people do pretty well for themselves.

The answer to both of these is how they value what they are getting. To rich liberals they want to use the government by proxy to assist people...however to those in Kansas they value the social ramifications rather than the economic (usually invoking abortion and guns).

Of course there is also the concept of limousine liberals that just talk and frankly wouldn't really want to do any advocacy. If you really want to see snobbery look in major newspapers around the country if there are fund raisers for various causes. In this country we give significant tax incentives for donating. Take that away and there's no way the same amount would be donated.

It should be noted that the social benefit programs that exist in Europe often times have resulted in a lack of charities and non profits that exist in the USA. Then again if everyone has healthcare from the government there's little sense in a non profit soliciting money for health care when it's provided. So these germans probably don't have the organizing expertise to create a non profit and thus they are asking for the government to take more money.

There is also this concept that I think the kennedys somewhat invoked
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige

Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 269

A good deal of our top 1% in the US put out a liberal/progressive perona, such as Buffett will talk about how his tax rate is half of what those who work for him are yet that's as far as it goes. Gates will fund different things through his Gates foundation, effectively acting as a quasi governemnt social program, yet won't use his clout to push any type of social agenda through political action etc. They all put out a public image of progressive thinking yet once they step back into the board room, it's business as usual.

Joined: 22 Dec 2007 Posts: 445

The other thing to look at is the taxes we had in the past relative to what they are now to both people and businesses were dramatically different.

Anyone advocating for the "good old days" of Eisenhower might be shocked to know that back then we had a 90% income tax (marginalized of course). JFK cut taxes and Reagan did the same and Bush did the same.

But the amount of the budget that came from people vs businesses was nearly even then...the rates on businesses has gone down at a higher rate than that of people.

Of course the trickled down concept was that if you lower the taxation then businesses would hire more and thus the people would get jobs and pay more. the trouble is why would they hire here if they can get cheaper rates of labor overseas.

We can't expect citizens to foot the bill for everything so that's why there's been deficits all over the place.

Gates does some things here and there but the trouble is if a charity acts in different ways they can be hunted by the IRS. For example if a church or other house of worship tells you to vote for someone based on their teachings that's one thing. If they outright tell you who that is they can lose tax exempt status.

Limousine liberals are the ones I tend not to like. I know someone personally who is a cab driver and has dealt with a movie director who is racist (he's African American and the cabbie is white) he didn't even give a tip!

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