Donations

[AcneVulgaris]

With house prices as they are at the moment here in the UK, most people will need the money to drop out of the sky... Buying even a small house is now impossible for a sizeable proportion of the population. Not just the ordinary below average wage folk but professionals too. If you want to buy in London you'd better make sure your going to be a millionaire first.
People are paying huge sums for properties Americans would think are little better than a small damp shed.

California is still like this, despite a 30% drop in prices. Add to that a roughly 10% income tax on people that actually make enough to live there, and a roughly 10% sales tax, and you have a pretty impossible situation.

The place we moved out of is on the market for 700k. We were renting it for 1100... the payment would be $3500. The landlady asked if we wanted to buy it, and I just laughed at her.

[Zenophas]

I donate to little children when ever I can.

[Nielk1]

Corporations are not people. HOWEVER, the truth is that a corporation insulates those who own it. There is a reason for this, however, no one bothers to actually think about it. The truth is, that anyone with a small business must make it an LLC or some other protective system or they WILL have their life savings wiped out.

We live in the world of parasites that go after every company that exists, be it insulating its owners or not, simply because they are easy targets. It is this insulation that allows a new business to exist just as it allows an old business to exist and an abolishment of "corporations as people" as it is so improperly put would destroy the economy entirely.

Many people never bother to think of the whole issue, they only think of themselves, they only say that things should change for everyone else. This is hypocrisy, this is the driving force between the 1% AND the 99%, this is the absolute truth.

Without the "Vail of Ignorance" (look it up) it is impossible to have a fair system. As this is an impossibility, the best we can do is try to consider all parties and all realities of a situation. However, sadly, it is those who are blind to this that compensate with the loudest voices.

Many of the political things I read on the internet, hear in the news, and hear in opinion shows sicken me, not because I disagree, but because these opinions are forged on incomplete realities, or worse opinion is presented as fact or facts withheld because they do not fit a bias.

To truly exist in a fair and proper world we must all learn all that we can of anything on which we form an opinion if we feel the need to convey that opinion in a way more than simply as a statement of our beliefs on an incomplete basis. If we wish to try to change the mind of others, or to vote and decide the actions to be done by the majority, we must consider the reality, not our small notion of it.

Many of the opinions posted on this very forum I agree with, and many I disagree, and almost never is this isolated to a specific user. For example, I find some things MrTwoseheds says to be quite correct and other bits to just be misinformation by regurgitation of tainted statistics. It is not his fault just as it is not the fault of any of you that the entire reality is not considered, often no one can know the entire reality, but we must learn to question the sources of our information and to evaluate any statistics ourselves and view the data in other ways.

Yes, that's what metrics are for.

That chart was specifically designed to mislead for example. The groupings are entirely arbitrary. The correct chart would list only equal portions, thus, the bottom 25, lower 25, upper 25, and top 25%. Furthermore about that chart, it shows the 1%, 5%, 10%, and 25% as all the TOP but the 50% as the bottom, suggesting that the top 25% entry also contains the values for the top 10%, 5%, and 1%. Furthermore, this means that an entire 25% of the population is entirely ignored. If you were to redistribute the data you would find that the values are not unusual at all. In fact a different representation would show the truth, but such charts don't exist! The closest thing skews horribly because it isolates the small time period or specifically uses % of total income instead of % of total taxes.

In complete contrast to that chart we have charts like this:

What is the difference between the two? The first chart uses the % of income (and in doing so purposely leaves out things like capital gains which is how most money is made at that income bracket) and the 2nd chart uses the % of total taxes paid.

Statistics do not lie, however, a dishonest man (or woman) can present statistics in a way that misleads others, and others may regurgitate those statistics, those charts, without understand that they are being used.

If the chart I noted didn't seem to exist actually existed, it would not support either of the two above charts, it would instead reflect something shocking, a shallow standard deviation. The horror!

I am really busy and I wasted a lot of time on this post. If you manage to get a-hold of raw statistics of income and tax of that income (normal and capital gains and inheritance) and the total tax intake of the country I would gladly whip up a chart showing the distribution curves of BOTH tax percent and tax exact, with respect to ALL the percentage of total taxes, percentile of income, and raw income.

Somehow, I doubt that the average citizen has access to untainted statistics.

[MrTwosheds]

My point about "corporations as people" was not a criticism of their purpose, simply pointing out that a corporation is made up of many people, and that its profits are generated by all (well most) of its employees work, the fact that a sizeable portion of that profit gets deposited into the directors personal income and thus his personal tax contributions, does not alter the fact that it is actually money earned by other people too.
I know in my long employment as a "temp" for a large corporation, that I personally saved them millions of $ on several occasions, I never saw a cent of it, or even got recognised for it, they choose to pour these earnings into their "elites" bank accounts and pension funds, Their tax is also the contributions of many others without whom they would not have earned anything at all.

I will not ever let myself get taken for a fool like that again, I would rather attempt to eat grass, than work hard to fill the bank accounts of lying idle big mouthed back stabbers like I did then.
If I go to a job interview these days, its me who's interviewing them, to see if they are fit to be worked for.

Many modern corporations function just like feudal kingdoms, all the benefits are taken by the powerful few, while the serfs who work the soil go hungry as they load the Lords waggons with the food they produced. That top 1% is the product of many.

[AcneVulgaris]

Many that submit because they don't really know what to do with themselves if they're not told. They're the other side of the serfdom equation.

[Clavin12]

Here's a question in regard to redistribution of wealth. We can all agree that forced labor, slavery, is wrong, can we not? In that case why are we willing to consider the forcible removal of the fruits of labor from anyone, CEO or janitor? Does it not amount to the same thing?

[MrTwosheds]

If you mean Tax, then you have to consider the alternatives, that is no government, no law, no rights, or rule by violence in other words.
Anyone who wishes to see how this works can take a holiday in Somalia any time they want...
Freedom is not what its made out to be, liberty however is something we buy and its not cheap.

I know a few Anarchists, not one of them had an answer when I asked, "So if someone kidnaps your children, you want to be left to deal with it all by yourself do you?"

Law is the foundation of civilisation, it isn't free and the last thing you want to happen is that it only gets paid for by the wealthy, because then it will become their law, not yours.

[Clavin12]

Taxes I can handle, as long as they're fair and for something like national defense or the police system which give back to all. It's welfare, subsidies, public education, etc., which are the problem, for they only give back to some.

[MrTwosheds]

I'm a bit surprised to see public education in the list, I would have thought the need for it and its benefits are obvious.
Welfare is a more tricky issue, western nations have chosen a financial model, it has problems. The "agricultural" model works much better when the weather is good, but of course that requires a less market based type of economy, and a "tribal" society where the land is common property. This side of a very serious civil war, the west cannot easily just revert to the agricultural model.
The other option probably involves allot of violence, economic collapse and death camps.

Subsidies are just a form of political corruption and economic manipulation. Nobody who is interested in a stable (world) economy should be doing it. Which is why they are doing it.

If anyone knows of another way please speak up, It would be great if people could find a way to survive without access to land or money or resorting to violence.

I do kind of wonder how (the US) you have come to be having this political issue. It is so obvious in most countries, that withdrawal of welfare would lead to widespread criminality, conflict and economic failure, that nobody even talks about it, as it is just a lose-lose situation.
Is anyone talking about redistributing land as an alternative?

Would you vote to have your neighbourhood look like this?

[APCs r Evil]

withdrawal of welfare would lead to widespread criminality, conflict and economic failure, that nobody even talks about it, as it is just a lose-lose situation.

I agree, to a point. As of now, with almost everyone depending on the government (Jeez, even typing that word leaves a bad taste in my mouth these days...) for so much things would go really badly, really fast if the welfare suddenly vanished. Although I think people would survive just fine if they were weened off the welfare state and the older methods outlined in the article below were brought back to life.

This article gives a brief history on how welfare worked before the welfare state took over.

[MrTwosheds]

Might help, I suspect though that the economic divide is now firmly entrenched and that communities of people living in 2m$ houses wont know many people who live in storm drains. What would really help is for the wealthy to understand that they are not supposed to hoard their wealth and that they have a duty to help spread it, and create employment opportunities for those who actually need it, where its needed. My time in India showed me how bad a wealth divide can get, and how much more hostility is expressed by the wealthy towards the poor once the divide is firmly entrenched in racial/cast/family lines. They become the "other" and are not worthy of anything better than what they can find in an open sewer. So there they stay. But even here they have state education, for most anyway.
Sure as hell wouldn't happen any other way. They pay taxes too!

[Clavin12]

Greed is a problem. Hoarding wealth for yourself is a bad thing. The government should not forcibly try to fix it because it violates the rights of the people, upper, middle, and lower class. What's more, with a system as complicated as modern governments are, I imagine it would be easy for someone to take advantage of the welfare system and line his own pockets. These sorts of problems must be fixed some other way, through the spreading of ideas, changes of heart, peer pressure, etc. The government shouldn't do everything. People can take care of themselves, and each other.

[Nielk1]

99% of people who live in 2m$ homes don't own them. In reality the people living in far cheaper homes have more "money" and those in the 2m$ homes have more debt.

Do not believe that possession at an instance is the sum of value.

If it was your job to save them millions of dollars then you did your job. You do not deserve any special accolades for the doing of your job. Now if it wasn't specifically your job, you deserved at least some notice, but often it is not just the action but your continued actions that cause an effect. One must use their deeds as leverage rather than expect to be given something for them. Had you pursued a non temp job with said company and worked hard to advance your position, these deeds would have come into play.

Life is not like a game, life is not fair, value is not strictly set, and deeds do not go re-payed for their completion alone.

Employees are supposed to be a commodity, but if you do not carry yourself like one you become a replaceable commonality. If no company sees your worth, start your own.

The current form of welfare does far more harm then good in all area, be it stability of government finances, ability to exit the welfare state, crime, self worth, etc.

Oh, and federal public education is indoctrination more than education.

[Clavin12]

A common argument is that because your dog scares away a robber while you are out, the whole house now belongs to the dog, because he stopped it from being stolen. This is similar to your idea that you should have "seen a penny" of the millions of dollars you saved. On the contrary, this would be like saying all the cars made in a particular day belong to a single factory worker because the car could not have been made without him. This is absurd. The factory workers are being payed according to the value of the work that they do. Similarly, your dog is payed by being housed and fed in the house it protects. You may have been part of the process of saving millions of dollars, but that doesn't mean they owe it all to you, only as much as your individual work was worth, the amount you agreed to when you were hired.

[Nielk1]

A common argument is that because your dog scares away a robber while you are out, the whole house now belongs to the dog, because he stopped it from being stolen. This is similar to your idea that you should have "seen a penny" of the millions of dollars you saved. On the contrary, this would be like saying all the cars made in a particular day belong to a single factory worker because the car could not have been made without him. This is absurd. The factory workers are being payed according to the value of the work that they do. Similarly, your dog is payed by being housed and fed in the house it protects. You may have been part of the process of saving millions of dollars, but that doesn't mean they owe it all to you, only as much as your individual work was worth, the amount you agreed to when you were hired.

Better put than I could have. Need a tipped hat emote.