That's why I'm not a "class warfare/wealth envy" kind of guy. If someone has more than me, I figure "good for them." I've seen enough shitholes around the world to know 99 percent of us in America will survive just fine with our families intact.
Who the fuck is? This is bullshit you zombies suck out of the big sweaty propaganda teet. I don't care if anyone's rich, or what stupid bling they piss it away on, just pay in at the same rate to this dumb fake society as everyone else, cocksucka.
It shouldn't matter that people are rich. Society will always have a certain segment that earns more money than everyone else. You can't expect all 300 million people in the US to all be rich. At the end of the day what is important is that everyone plays by the same rules. Same taxes, same regulations, same loopholes, same rules. If you provide equal opportunity to everyone, as a whole your population will do better, and you won't have the differences amongst the classes. Is the US doing that? Is Canada doing that? I think both our countries have a habit of providing favorable rules for the upper class to exploit, while constantly making the middle class(small business) work harder to be successful. Also, the majority of the 'rich' people in the world are rich because they got into an industry where there is money to be made. Don't come bitching to me when your art degree doesn't make you as much much as my engineering degree. Too many kids come out of high school and get into fields where there is no future potential. There are two industries in the US hiring like crazy right now. Silicon Valley, or the computer industry, and the energy industry. If I were laid off by my current employer tomorrow, I could secure a job in Houston on Tuesday. Why? Because after high school I actually sat down and looked at my strength and weaknesses, saw which industry is doing good, where the jobs are....and went to post-secondary to get a degree that would allow me to excel in an industry where there IS a job when I finish. Am I wealthy? I'm certainly not in the millionaire or billionaire club, but I'm probably the 'first generation rich guy' that the article is talking about. And its all about making smart decisions. I know 15 kids that I graduated from high school with that are still living off of their parents money. Why? Because their art and music degree isn't helping them any. And yet, despite all that, I'm the evil one because I work 3000 hours a year, making more money per hour than Dickhead does in a single year. I'm the evil rich guy that should give more back because I put in 15 hour days, while the morons occupying wall street protest. Not saying that I disagree with the idea of the protest. I just think it has been aimed in the wrong direction. The government is responsible for the fuckup and the crash. They designed the rules that allowed Wall Street to exploit everyone, and then the government gave them billions in taxpayer money to pay for the fuckup. The government is imposing regulations preventing job growth, and the government created the stupid tax code that is so complicated our branch in the US has to keep at least 50 lawyers and accountants on retainer just to figure it out. The government created the loopholes that GE can use, and the government is screwing over small businesses by forcing them to play by a different set of rules. Who is John Galt?
You're not the target of the Occupy protests. Wall Street might want you to think you are, but you're not. And who's telling the government what to do? Who's funding the campaigns of the politicians that sponsor those bills? Who's paying the lobbyists that are writing the regulations?
Stagnation and increasing inequality are what people are miffed about, not just that there are rich people. So that's a strawman.
And this is why the 'Occupy' thing will fail in its current format. People tell the government what to do all they time, the government just doesn't tend to listen too much unless you've something they want. I'm sure the bankers are terribly impressed at seeing the Occupy crowd sit in Wall St, whilst they're discussing their wish lists to a bunch of politicos at a golf club dinner several hundred miles away. If you want to change how things currently work, then it's the government you need to target. They need to be more feared of the voters than they're enamoured of what something like Goldman Sachs can provide them. Stroppy protesters are great at generating headlines, but achieve the sum total of fuck all in changing anything.
Shrink the state. There isn't enough rich people to fund the size of modern western nations, so the middle class and poor get fleeced as well. Money is very good at generating more money, so if only the more wealthy have the available funds to invest heavily, they're quite obviously going to gain the vast majority of wealth increases if you lock out the lower earners from the same investment opportunities. And wages were always going to have some form of downward pressure as markets went global. The other option is we keep the developing countries poor so the western nations can keep buying ever bigger flat screen tellies.
The sad thing about dealing with liberals is that even after you show them the truth they continue to repeat erroneous bullshit like Orwellian sheep. This isn't the first time Dick Retard's been corrected on this nonsense, so there's little hope he's going to ever get it. But for the rest of you who think the above chart is even worth the effort of pasting, read on to understand what an idiot it makes you look like when you continue repeating it. From The National Bureau of Economic Research (the official "recession" people): Spaceturkey really is clueless, isn't he?
See above. When I've got a problem with the policy at a store, I don't complain to the cashier. I complain to the guy that signs the cashiers paycheques. In this case, that would be Wall Street.
Capital gains tax is simply a tax on inflation and a very unfair tax. You buy a house for 100k and 20 years later sell it for 250k, you get taxed on the 150k difference as if you actually gained value. The fact is that you still only have enough money to buy the same house so your buying power of that money is exactly the same.
From the article Face posted: Do you think they got that from reselling their 20 year old homes at market value?
That's a great fuckin' idea. Let's ratchet the capital gains tax way the fuck up so we can tank the stock market and bring back that Carter-era prosperity.
There's a great deal of truth to this. If I hold $1000 in cash, over time the government inflates the currency. Eventually it would cost $1200 to buy all the things I could have originally bought with my $1000. So, for simply investing my wealth in dollars I am taxed. If I don't have $1200 by the time my constant thousand is worth $833 in old dollars, then I have lost money. Taxed. But suppose I invest my $1000 and earn $200 during the same period. Am I even? No, because the government will want to tax the $200. Even my effort to simply offset the loss due to inflation -- at some risk to myself -- is taxed. Capital gains taxes are lower because they include a discount for the lost value of principal over time. So, yes, it is very justifiable for those whose money is risked, over time, to pay less taxes on long-term earnings than on day-to-day earnings.
Go to the source of the Rederal regulations that allowed everything to get out of control. That would be Washington.
Nothing will change until the government changes the laws. Wall Street plays by the rules they are given. So we should go after the government because they are the only ones who can fix things. Plus they screwed up in the first place.