Haven given this further thought i'm not sure why we would concern ourselves with the legality of the action.
Our government has demonstrated over and over that the Law means nothing to them, so why limit yourself?
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Strange Times
- Thread starter BigWillieCock
- Start date
Our government has demonstrated over and over that the Law means nothing to them, so why limit yourself?
I'm not advocating for any major reform or big top-down solution, but the things cities do to bend over backwards for big businesses and chains often sucks the wealth out of communities. You can't do anything with a cheap walmart building and parking when they decide to move across the street.
When they hit their SS retirement age, they can earn all they want to. It's just a matter of what a person in his/her middle to late 60s is able or willing to do. In many cases, it's a lot.
In SC politics any talk of taxes brings a torrent of condemnation. I'm simply saying Wal-Mart, Amazon. and large corporations pay next to nothing in taxes. Meanwhile small business (like mine) pay their fair share of state and federal taxes. We allow lobbyist to trade loopholes for donations. In SC any mention of changing this is whistled down as raising taxes and everyone falls in line.
I've noticed a couple of references in this thread to unequal distribution on wealth. Every time I see that, it makes me squirm, and I'm not one of the one-percenters, either. Makes me think of Russia and 2017. The things that create great wealth in this country for some people are initiative, vision, and drive. Success is occasioned by opportunity. If we ever reach the place where those things are not rewarded but penalized and discouraged, all of the greatness will have been lost. Wealth isn't distributed through capriciousness or fate. It is what it is for identifiable reasons. Often those reasons have to do as much with those who don't attain it as with those who do - and sometimes more.
Agreed. It really creeps me out when the assumption is made that somehow "Success is Evil".
Agree ~ But there needs to be a line in the sand. You can't have runaway wealth and power which are used to create unfair advantages and deceive. We are seeing this with Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.
For example, Amazon being offered initial advantages (e.g. tax exemptions) from States to bury brick & mortar businesses or them using search data to create "fake brands" and undercut their clients. Google changing their auto-search results to influence thoughts and behaviors. Twitter censoring those they simply don't care for. Facebook create fake fact checkers and censoring who they don't like. Not to mentioned, they've all been granted unique indemnity from our government which further limits competition.
IMO, everyone should be able to enjoy as much success/wealth as they can create in a lifetime. However, the amount of wealth you can pass down should be capped (larger cap 1m+). This would not only assist in the helping return a middle class, but also handing your children an excessive pot of gold often creates dysfunction - lack of purpose/drive and destructive lifestyles.
Capitalism with a conscience.
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Wow. A LOT of assumptions being made in just one paragraph. The concept of dispossessing someone just because a relative dies is nothing short of heinous. "Death Taxes" have to be the most unAmerican thing ever conceived by government.
I've seen it ruin kids over and over again. Outside of their actual living environments, rich kids and kids on the street have a lot in common. Doesn't matter who you are - people need a purpose. This is a great deterrent of drive.
Also, it is entitlement. Where you are born, what you look like, your intelligence or ability to learn - that's all a lottery.
No, it's ownership and taking it under whatever guise is simply Grand Theft.
You can argue that descendants have no right to that wealth. However, the government has no rights to it at all.
Haha... we're stealing their money for their own good. Bwahaha, I love it!!!
You could make that same argument with what's going on with Google, Twitter, etc. These are now monopolies operating with unfair advantages (a few cited above), including through unique power granted by our government.
If you are lucky enough to be born into a family that has wealth, you would receive a great starter kit (1m+) that most would not have. And I'm certainly not talking about simply handing it to the current government. This would be something setup on the upcoming blockchain technology for full transparency. Change is coming.
There's been plenty of books written about this subject from conservative authors - not a new concept.
Whether you are born in urine on the streets of a dictator regime OR in a 20,000 sq ft mansion in LA, it's nothing but a lottery. If you are the latter, you got extremely lucky. Now use your signing bonus to do something in your lifetime that creates value and worth for both you and society.
This would also assist in narrowing that ever-widening gap of wealth inequality in the US. The wealthy are so fearful of what is going on now that they are now creating citadels around the world and separate themselves from the general population forever.
To read what you've been posting, who could blame them? Would you not at least attempt hold off a riotous mob from plundering your home and livelihood? That isn't wicked. It's human nature.
There is nothing inherently evil in being wealthy. Nor is there innate virtue with being poor.
I’m a small business owner also, and could not agree more on the tax break issue.
But you try and convince the people in the rural communities with no jobs that a Walmart distribution center, an Amazon distribution or a Volvo plant is a bad idea because of tax breaks. Good luck!
This is not new. The textile mills were doing the same thing in a different way 100 years ago in terms of cheap land/cheap labor. Small business thrived along side them.
I think the biggest problem small business has is perception. You own a business, you must be rich. Pay your employees more, blah, blah.
I think if there were a collective communications strategy that clarified that error, you’d get more public/political support in evening out the playing field.
Just think if each of the 30 million small businesses in this country, which 98% of all businesses, contributed $1,000 a year to a communications lobbying fund. I’d think $30 billion gets you a seat at the table.
No, I don't blame them. But let's get to the source. We need a middle class in this country for everyone involved.
The notion of the disappearing middle class is such a myth. What we consider "middle class," would be high cotton in most countries. Wages for the middle class are skyrocketing. Everyone is hiring. We have not seen a sellers market for non degreed/non tech people like this in my 56 years on this planet. You can take every penny away from Gates, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc., give it to the government to re-distribute, and it won't better the middle class one bit. Their combined net worth compared to the trillions being spent on "stimulus" is a rounding error. And this stimulus is nothing but an ineffective sugar high. The bills will come due and, with increasing interest rates, it's going to hurt bad.
The problem with the disappearing middle class is not that someone else got rich. It's that the work and educational ethic that the Boomer generation had is simply gone. How many people take classes at our many tech schools to pick up new skills that could advance their careers? Very damn few. The Boomer generation had plenty of people (including those in my family) who, in one generation went from poverty to upper middle and upper income groups. Yes, well designed government programs (e.g. G.I. Bill and VA loans) helped. But FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower did not just write blank checks so people could spend without consequences.
No politician will ever blame the middle class for the overblown "plight" of the middle class. But truth is, that is where the blame lies. America is still a land of opportunity, and as many posters above have shown, opportunity abounds.
What source? Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett all began life as middle class. They all developed an idea and generated wealth.
The "Failing Middle Class" would be best served if they...Shut Up, Put Their Heads Down, and Got Back to Work...
You can't tax yourself into prosperity and the government never enriched anyone.
Again, I'm not advocating for anything in particular, but we do certain things terribly in this country. The middle class is shrinking. We have hundreds of thousands of homeless, a hospital visit can ruin a family financially, massive personal debt, overworked, overstressed, higher education is expensive, we're car dependent, we have a housing issue... and there is more. We have the best of the best, and if you're creative and work hard, there is no limit. But the suggestion that a strong middle class is essential or that is is to our advantage to not leave a vast number of citizens behind should not be perceived as weak or "socialist" or whatever lazy term is popular. Quality of life means more than good drinking water and indoor plumbing.
And since we're going there, I think there are conservative solutions to these problems, which I prefer, but "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" is like a running joke at this point. Boomers really think they're just cut from a different cloth, which may be true, but they walked out of college with jobs. It was just completely different, and they proudly act like everything is a character issue as we apprach the cliff.
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A myth? There's very little argument about this from economists on either side of the aisle.
I'm not talking about giving it to the government in current form. That would be a disaster.
I would have agreed with you 30 years ago. The landscape is far different now. Look at any chart from either side of the aisle on the subject. The middle class is drying up.
Create as much success and wealth as you can in a lifetime - you deserve it. Also feel free to pass a massive starter kit down to your offspring. But let them take it from there.
I'm directly in the crosshairs of what we are talking about. But I also firmly believe that inheritance is just another form of welfare - and maybe the worst kind.
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The fact that rich get richer does not mean the middle disappears. This argument has been made for decades. Milton Friedman destroyed it in the '70s. People buy into this notion that, if someone else is doing better, that person is at fault for me not achieving my desires. Pure crap. Good politics but success is not a zero sum game. When someone tells me they can't get ahead, I ask them "what have you done to make yourself more valuable?". I get a blank stare almost to the person. I would agree that there are times when it has been really challenging for a young person to get a job to get started. These aren't one of those times.
You can make this same argument for kids who are given everything before they even get started.
Successful people aren't the problem, they are the solution.
We're wired for survival and purpose. This is how we thrive.
Hey, if you really want death taxes and wealth taxes just post thus link. Even I want to take everything from them when I see this stuff 
https://www.ranker.com/list/the-very-best-of-the-rich-kids-of-instagram-tumblr/robert-wabash
https://www.ranker.com/list/the-very-best-of-the-rich-kids-of-instagram-tumblr/robert-wabashI look around and just about everything I see IS a character issue. Back when I was still young and smoking there was a kid in the smoking area that looked at me and said "I wish I had an office job like you." My reply was "What's stopping you?" I got the blank stare. He had "better" things to do with his time after work.
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Well to be fair, as % of society, far fewer degrees were being handed out back then. We have more degrees, at more cost and student debt than we do degree necessary jobs. Just saying it’s not apples to apples.
That's true, but I don't think many careers are easy to start. I am supportive of trades and think it was a mistake to stigmatize those careers.
100%! Commented on that earlier. It’s why many of our immigrants are doing better than our college grads.
Flippant? No, serious. Very serious. Your response was flippant. You don't get it. That's not my problem.
That's bullshit. I graduated from college in 1971 and jobs were few and far between. I had no clue what I was going to do or where I was going to do it. I worked part time my whole college career and left college with ZERO debt. And no, my parents only paid for my books. I am not a doctor, so I understand that they accumulated more debt thank I, and yes maybe they walked out with a job. But not everyone who graduated college came out with a silver spoon stuck in their mouth.
The middle class is shrinking because we are currently taking government money and supporting illegal aliens in this country instead of helping the Americans here who need the help. We scream that people will not take the shots, yet we let in undocumented, unvaccinated people and send them all over the country. Just stupid.
You just chalked Americans struggling to character problems, eliminating any possibility for the suggestion that things could actually be more complicated than that and the status quo is fine. You should run for office.
Why do I think the phrase most heard from you since age 2 is 'that's not fair"?
I think the "status quo" is a downward death spiral and yet you seem to believe that you're in a position to claim that the status quo is just fine with me. Is there something wrong with you?
immigrant groups subject the the most discrimination a century ago, who have not been beneficiaries of central government affirmative action, etc., are likely to be productive and closer to the top of the socio-economic ladder today
groups that have been the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse (see Great Society, etc.) are, unfortunately, found near the bottom; their votes are a lock
good luck to all
go cocks!
