Return of Mass Layoffs

Dammy said:
Bottom 50% only paid 3% of total income taxes that the government is spending, funny that.
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Most of the people at the bottom earn their income. People in the top have more unearned income. These are the investing classes and they are not terribly economically useful. They leach off the work of others by leveraging their legal control of resources rather than by creative effort.
Bottom 43% paid zero in income taxes but take the bulk of social services but the top 1% is paying 40% of all federal income tax and takes little to no social services, is that fair?
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Yup. The farmer has to pay the upkeep of the cows he milks.
Tell me about Canada. What should the wealthy Canadians be paying as a percentage of their income?
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Graduated taxes don't work that way and there is a difference between income and disposable income. However, once the top are earning more than 100 times what the bottom are earning then some pretty severe taxes are in order, simply because, as we have seen repeatedly, once people start making more than that they rapidly proceed to monopolize more and more of the resources and negatively impact the productive economy. Take a look at the US for a good example of the power and damage the investing classes have done. It is simple self preservation for a democratic society to have protections in place to prevent the rise of emperors.

Imagine what would happen in sport if the winners of the Super Bowl were allowed to make the rules for the next year. But in politics, those that won the last round are exactly the people who get to make the rules for everyone for the next round - and guess who wins by those rules. It's anti-competitive and anti-democratic and it's bad for society.

There's a reason a game of Monopoly(TM) ends when one person owns everything.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
They left the gold standard because they didn't have enough gold.
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That is true, but it not they didn't have enough gold. It gold leaving the US and lose it power on the US money. We have no idea if the US have gold or not. I do agree that the US dollars need to backup with something like a basket of currency (not the best) or basket of commodities (the best).
 
Bottom 50% only paid 3% of total income taxes that the government is spending, funny that. Bottom 43% paid zero in income taxes but take the bulk of social services but the top 1% is paying 40% of all federal income tax and takes little to no social services, is that fair?
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Of course it's not fair. If it were fair then no one would have to use social services. It's clearly unfair that the "American Dream" is failing nearly half of those in the society. When those top 1% own nearly 500 times more resources than the 40% there is a huge problem. Egypt prior to their riots had a more equalized wealth system.

Lots of other inequitities to talk about here. How about the average woman with a PhD makes what the average man with a Bachelor's Degree makes? We have a system that sells itself as work hard and you'll move ahead. If someone isn't moving ahead then we blame the victim for not working hard enough. It's crazy stupid!
 
@Metalman,

Increased spending Bush v Obama according to the CBO:
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Dammy said:
That is what happens when you make taxation and regulations so heavy that industry leaves for other countries and takes the jobs with them.
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This article contains some charts showing where the US stands in terms of corporate taxation with respect to other countries.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
This article contains some charts showing where the US stands in terms of corporate taxation with respect to other countries.
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The individual v corporate trend is quite revealing and the polar opposite of what the Murdoch-propaganda machine spouts.

What a surprise.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
US companies are doing great - but they aren't hiring Americans and the American workers they still have aren't sharing in the profits.
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Companies are clearly not sharing in the profits. Over the last 5 years the production of the American worker has improved. Salaries have not. Corporations are seeing huge profits. They fill the bank with savings and ask for a tax cut. Again we're seeing Trickle Down economics fail. There's something wrong with our system that when a business makes a record profit and doesn't see record taxes to go along with it.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
They left the gold standard because they didn't have enough gold.
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The Democrats couldn't go on spending sprees that devalued the US dollar if it was backed by gold. I will point out that Mexico will have their Peso backed by silver in 2013. BTW, since the US dollar went off of gold standard, it's about worth $0.10 to what a USD use to buy. Funny enough, a gold coin would buy you a great suit today as it would 100 years ago. Suits is worth what it was 100 years ago, the dollar is the one that devalued.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
A symptom of the problem is GE paying no taxes on big profits and taking a tax break.
They also benefited from the bank bailouts, but it hasn't made them feel any loyalty to the American taxpayer whose money they gladly took. Instead they are moving their X-Ray business to China
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And the CEO is on Obama's Jobs Advisory Board.

But do you remember that link I posted back a while ago to OpenSecrets.org. Did anyone go and check out what Congress Critters' top investments were?
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Where is old Nancy in the above? http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-06-16/news/29687626_1_stock-gains-house-speaker-charles-rangel
 
Dammy said:
The Democrats couldn't go on spending sprees that devalued the US dollar if it was backed by gold.
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Nixon was the guy that took the dollar off the gold standard and he was a Republican. Republicans historically go on as bad or worse spending sprees. You can't make this a Democrat only thing. Dem/Rep is NOT the problem. It's both of them because of the class of people both sides represent. On side is spending sprees, big business and gay marriage and the other is spending sprees, big business and no gay marriage.
 
redrumloa said:
Yes we can blame this on Obama.
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I guess that YOU can - or rather you WILL. Unfortunately that means you are letting a whole bunch of ignorant jack-asses, corporate whores and vicious oligarchs off the hook. Getting rid of Obama will help as much as getting rid of Bush did - i.e. not much.

Who is really at fault here? How about all the people that have forgotten that they ARE the government and the clowns in DC are just their representatives. Problem is most of the government (people of the United States) just aren't competent to rule. They are ignorant of the issues and just too lazy to do the job of staying on top of the representatives. I'd bet 90% of them would rather watch football than read a bill and call their representative.
 
Robert said:
<sheepishly raises hand>
I have to confess, I'm guilty of that.
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Almost everyone is. I should have upped the fraction to 99% but I bet I'd still be short of the number. It's somewhat boring and we'd rather not be bothered but we've hired a bunch of clowns to run the shop and they've got used to the idea that no-one is going to drop by to make sure they aren't stealing from the till.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Almost everyone is. I should have upped the fraction to 99% but I bet I'd still be short of the number. It's somewhat boring and we'd rather not be bothered but we've hired a bunch of clowns to run the shop and they've got used to the idea that no-one is going to drop by to make sure they aren't stealing from the till.
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Of course, I was being flippant. I do try to keep an eye on things but I like a bitr of fun in my life too. Striking the balance is the thing I haven't quite mastered. :-)
 
Robert said:
Striking the balance is the thing I haven't quite mastered. :)
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Fun is what you do when the work is done. Since we have all borrowed so much fun over the last few years we are left with a huge backlog of work and with serious interest payments too. Current balance is - all work and no play. Which isn't really fair because work can be play too. Politics is the sport that matters and play is a part of it. Watching other people play politics (and watching other people play sport) is precisely pointless. It doesn't do anything except take time away from you to go and do things yourself.

But then again - that's why there is a sports section in the paper - to cut down on the number of people that read the news. That's why there's sports on the TV (and soap operas etc). To make sure that even the unemployed don't have time to annoy "our betters" with their demands.

It's not that you are "bad" for being normal but you have to realize - everyone has to realize what NOT paying attention is getting them.
 
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