Occupy Wall Street protest

[robertlouis]

I have to diagree. Our public officials from the president down through both houses to your alderman are elected. If someone remains in office it's the will of the electorate. Of course you can complain that the electorate is stupid or being lied to; but that's another matter. The point is that diminishing the power of our elected officials to tax and regulate only attenuates our power and amplifies that of the large coporatations which wish neither be taxed nor regulated.

I'm exactly with you Trish. And sadly it's the very people who campaign against big government, and it's largely a phenomenon in the US rather than here, where there's a small but vociferous and occasionally influential faction on the loony right edge of the conservative party, who, if they succeed in their aims, will see corporations rush into any vacuum that's created and turn services that were previously provided as a public good into fuck you for profit schemes. By which time, of course, it will all be too late.

Here in the UK the NHS is currently under threat in a way that it hasn't been since its foundation in 1948, from a government which seems intent on giving the market full sway in a system whose guiding principle has always been to provide treatment free of charge at the point of demand.

[BellaBellucci]

I have to diagree. Our public officials from the president down through both houses to your alderman are elected. If someone remains in office it's the will of the electorate. Of course you can complain that the electorate is stupid or being lied to; but that's another matter. The point is that diminishing the power of our elected officials to tax and regulate only attenuates our power and amplifies that of the large coporatations which wish neither be taxed nor regulated.

Money talks, the voters walk. We're going to have to agree to disagree I guess.

~BB~

[robertlouis]

Money talks, the voters walk. We're going to have to agree to disagree I guess.

~BB~

Isn't the issue here that while government may be incompetent, inefficient and sometimes even venal, the alternative of in effect handing over to government by big corporations is infinitely worse?

[trish]

Well we can agree to disagree, but I do have to say that, "Money talks, the voters walk" is not much of an argument. If you take away the power to tax and regulate, then the monied will have an even greater voice and the walkers will be crippled. To reverse the trend the course is plain and simple.

The real trouble with your Venn diagram, however, is the intersection. The tea baggers are not against big corporations. Look at the tea bagger candidates. Cain is not against the corporations. Rick Perry owes the financial success of his state to big oil, and he never speaks a word against them. The tea baggers are against taxing capital gains, they're against environmental protections, they're against everything big business is against.

Small businesses, want to see middle class gains to increase the demand for products. Large corporations are making record profits, they have already structurally acclimated to the diminished work force and aren't about to hire or create new jobs. But who are the tea baggers siding against? The middle class. The main tea bagger complaint is that the lower and middle classes aren't paying enough taxes and that the so called "job creators" need a continuance of the bush tax break in spite of the fact that it never ever produced jobs.

No, there are scarce few tea baggers who say anything against large corporations.

[BellaBellucci]

Well we can agree to disagree, but I do have to say that, "Money talks, the voters walk" is not much of an argument. If you take away the power to tax and regulate the monied will have an even greater voice and the walkers will be crippled. To reverse the trend the course is plain and simple.

I'm not that kind of Libertarian. I believe in taxing the rich. I also believe in restructuring the tax code into a 'flat tax' or 'fair tax' and abolishing the IRS (and the Fed) in order to do so and as a means to reduce the burden on the middle class. But the most important fiscal policy I believe in, as I've said before, is a commodity-based monetary standard. Fiat currency, the silent tax, is imposed by the super rich (i.e. The Fed), upon every citizen, but it hurts those at the bottom of the economic ladder the most. This debate isn't as simple as just a discussion on tax policy. There are many more aspects to this problem.

I'm not a laissez-faire type; I do believe in minimal regulation, and as I've said many time before in this thread, I strongly disagree with the notion of corporate personhood. Also, I think foreign companies should pay more in taxes for the right to access our economy and our domestic companies should pay more, too, but probably not as much as OWS protesters would like. I mean, look, we got into this crisis because of market manipulation, not because corporate taxes are too low. What really should have happened was prosecutions against those involved and heavy fines levied against the financial industry, not as a penalty for existence (i.e. taxes), but for their wrongdoings (i.e. fines).

The real trouble with your Venn diagram, however, is the intersection. The tea baggers are not against big corporations. Look the the tea bagger candidates. Cain is not against the corporations. Rick Perry owes the financial success of his state to big oil, and he never speaks a word against them. The tea baggers are against taxing capital gains, they're against environmental protections, they're against everything big business is against.

Well, the intersection is the perception of the diagram designer, who is not I, but I also don't see how the diagram argues your point about the Tea Party, which is at one of its ends.

Small businesses, want to see middle class gains to increase the demand for products. Large corporations are making record profits, they have already structurally acclimated to the diminished work force and aren't about to hire or create new jobs. Who are the tea baggers siding against? The middle class. The main tea bagger complaint is that the lower and middle classes are paying enough taxes and that the so called "job creators" need a continuance of the bush tax break in spite of the fact that it never ever produced jobs. No, there are scare few tea baggers who say anything against large corporations.

I think the tax cuts should be based on hiring incentives. If you add that slight condition to the Tea Party position, then that position gains a lot more standing. Hopefully it willl see that as it continues forward, particularly as it watches what it probably considers an opposition movement in OWS.

It's all about happy mediums.

~BB~

[trish]

We disagree on the fairness of a flat tax. The cost of the necessities for life (food, water, shelter etc.) do not rise in proportion to one’s income. Hence the difference between income and the real cost of living increases as one goes up the income ladder. That is why a flat tax is inherently unfair. A ten percent tax on a secretary bringing in $15000.00 a year is much more onerous than a ten percent tax on someone bringing in $1000000.00 a year. As the years go by not only does the economic disparity increase but the disparity in power (as you say, “Money talks”). I see the only advantage of a flat tax is it makes loops holes more difficult to create and navigate, but at the expense of exacerbating the problem it is meant to solve: disparity in political power.

I’m not sure how tax breaks based on hiring incentives would work, especially if you’re for a flat tax. Business have a finite employee capacity which when saturated cannot be profitably inflated. So the growing businesses which can hire because they are not yet operating at capacity get the tax break, but the mature business which are operating at capacity don’t. It’s a fix, but it’s a fix that creates just the sort of loophole a flat tax is supposed to avoid.

Addendum: Sorry about the typo in the previous post: The teabagger complaint is that the middle class is NOT paying enough taxes. They are actually for increasing the tax burden on the middle class while continuing to give profiteers a break.

[BellaBellucci]

We disagree on the fairness of a flat tax. The cost of the necessities for life (food, water, shelter etc.) do not rise in proportion to one’s income. Hence the difference between income and the real cost of living increases as one goes up the income ladder. That is why a flat tax is inherently unfair. A ten percent tax on a secretary bringing in $15000.00 a year is much more onerous than a ten percent tax on someone bringing in $1000000.00 a year. As the years go by not only does the economic disparity increase but the disparity in power (as you say, “Money talks”). I see the only advantage of a flat tax is it makes loops holes more difficult to create and navigate, but at the expense of exacerbating the problem it is meant to solve: disparity in political power.

I’m not sure how tax breaks based on hiring incentives would work, especially if you’re for a flat tax. Business have a finite employee capacity which when saturated cannot be profitably inflated. So the growing businesses which can hire because they are not yet operating at capacity get the tax break, but the mature business which are operating at capacity don’t. It’s a fix, but it’s a fix that creates just the sort of loophole a flat tax is supposed to avoid.

Addendum: Sorry about the typo in the previous post: The teabagger complaint is that the middle class is NOT paying enough taxes. They are actually for increasing the tax burden on the middle class while continuing to give profiteers a break.

Good points about the flat tax. I'd make two caveats then: a high threshold for the tax, much more than your example of $15,000/year, and a separate tax system for corporations, used to encourage beneficial behavior and penalize the negative. Again, the most important move that can be made here is that we should actually start treating corporations like corporations.

~BB~

[BigDF]

One of the things I've been noticing on the news lately is GOP and their bosses beginning to talk about the "free market" again which is amusing because back in 2008 no one on that side of politics mentioned anything about that. I'm no economic guru, I had a class on economics in college where I saw a movie that stated that Hong Kong was an excellent example of the free market in practice. I can't remember much of the movie except that the residential area began on boats in the harbor and headed up the hillside. Given the fact that I'm retired on disability, something tells me that in the free market economy I'd be living on a boat right now.

[Bobby Domino]

Add this to the list: WSJ accused of unorthodox boost to circulation

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44879240...1#.TpYdFnOlCPB

[russtafa]

there is now talk of this neo hippie rent a crowd protesting out side of our stock exchange in Sydney.i would love to see these wankers try to piss off the hells angels or rebels they piss off the general public