Syria Attacks It's Own People

[devonrevenge]

same here in the UK some multibillionairs know how not to pay tax, infact it is what bankrupted greece, its like an honour thing to avoid taxes, that your not truly a rich person unless you can dodge taxes.

The Greeks personal complexity bankrupted them lol.

its all going weird in europe, fascism is rising massivley, have you heard that the UK is going to get a censorship firewall made by the same guys who do chinas one?

[3qX21hU5]

Greece went bankrupt because of it's policies and how they were handled not because the rich didn't pay taxes. It also annoys me when people say the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes.

I can't speak for other countries but in the US the top 10% pay 70% of the taxes. I hardly see how that is dodging taxes and not paying their fair share but that is a whole different debate.

I don't know why the world we live in now days it is bad to be rich. And if you are rich you somehow are some evil character that is doing wrong things. What happened to the dream of success? It seems like now being rich is something that is looked down upon.

[Disch]

I can't speak for other countries but in the US the top 10% pay 70% of the taxes. I hardly see how that is dodging taxes and not paying their fair share but that is a whole different debate.

The top 10% may pay 70% of the taxes...
but the top 5% make 70% of the income.

Therefore... the wealthy pay a smaller percentage of their income to taxes. Hence the tax dodge.


EDIT:

I don't know why the world we live in now days it is bad to be rich.

Being rich isn't bad... it's generally how people become rich that pisses people off. Compare Steve Jobs (rich, loved) vs Mitt Romney (rich, widely hated).

But really the problem is less about the individuals which are on the upper end of the income distribution... and more about the tremendous gap between income equality.

This video sums it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM


EDIT:

Also I wasn't paying attention. I thought this thread was about Syria?

[maeriden]

Are you realy surprised that a lounge thread got off topic?

[devonrevenge]

@Zereo, your rich and you "find ways so that you don't have to pay so many taxes" :P

And the dream of success is flawed because these days in order for you to be successful you have to unnecessarily create losers...and this only applies to excess, by which I mean working to buy a new car every year and peeing the best champaign up the wall...or burning 50£ notes in front of homeless people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club)

TBF Who isnt rich and evil??

[3qX21hU5]

Disch wrote:

The top 10% may pay 70% of the taxes...
but the top 5% make 70% of the income.

Therefore... the wealthy pay a smaller percentage of their income to taxes. Hence the tax dodge.

Ya but wealthy people have more money to invest and investment tax is taxed at a lower rates. And if "non-rich" people wanted to invest they would be taxed at the same rate also.

So it basically comes down to the wealthy of us in the US usually make most of their income from investments which are taxed at a lower rate (Which they should be because those investments are being invested into new businesses, new products, state bonds, what have you and if you raised the investment tax rate less people would be willing to invest in new ventures.) while the "middle class" usually gets their income as salary or hourly wage which is taxed differently.

Though I will agree that there are some rich people that cheat the system just like there is some middle class/poor people that cheat the system.

If I had a say in it I would just drop our unnecessarily confusing tax code we have right now and redo it from scratch. Make it something simple that everyone can understand without having to be a tax expert.


Basically the point I am trying to say is it isn't the wealthy people not paying their share which is the problem. It is actually a combination of a bunch of different factors that is creating such a wide wealth ratio.

One being the culture of the US in my opinion. Another is certain policies and educational problems (Ranging from K-12 and how expensive college is these days). Them are only a few and there is a bunch more factors to it in my opinion which need to be addressed.

Devon wrote:

And the dream of success is flawed because these days in order for you to be successful you have to unnecessarily create losers...

As with anything in life there is usually winners and losers we really need to get away from this we all are equal politically correctness thing we are going through. Winning gives you something to strive for and losing gives you the kick in the butt you need to do better. The way I like to think about is like sports. There wouldn't really be much point of basketball or baseball or whatever sport you wanna name if everyone was winners would there? What would push you to practice and try and achieve better?

But what you are saying if I am understanding you right is completely untrue. You don't have to make people "poor" (Create losers) in order to be successful and I really have no idea where you got that from. In fact it is most likely the complete opposite. When someone becomes successful it usually means more jobs that will be created which in turn raises other people up.

Also what is wrong with working to buy a new car every year? If you have the money to do so might as well spend it on things you like. You other examples are examples of a**holes not rich people.

[Disch]

Ya but wealthy people have more money to invest and investment tax is taxed at a lower rates. And if "non-rich" people wanted to invest they would be taxed at the same rate also.

Yeah but you can't invest if you are living paycheck to paycheck and barely make enough money to make your necessary payments.

That's where the system is broken. "The rich get richer" because they make money simply by having money... whereas many people who work equally hard (or harder) struggle to make ends meet.

Investing is sort of like a rich privilege. Most people can't do it. So of course it's taxed less... because that's how rich people make their money. Tax dodge.

Basically the point I am trying to say is it isn't the wealthy people not paying their share which is the problem.

I actually agree. I don't think taxes are really an issue. For one reason... the government makes enough money... they're just really terrible at managing it. If we give them more money they'll just waste more of it.

Winning gives you something to strive for and losing gives you the kick in the butt you need to do better. The way I like to think about is like sports. There wouldn't really be much point of basketball or baseball or whatever sport you wanna name if everyone was winners would there? What would push you to practice and try and achieve better?

The problem with this analogy is that "losing" at life is something you generally can't recover from. Unlike in sports, you can't just "play another game of life" where you learned from your mistakes.

Furthermore, many of the "losers" aren't losers because they made bad decisions.... and many of the "winners" aren't winners because they made good decisions. Most of it has to do with the life they were born into.


Another way the sports analogy is flawed is that life is not a competition. Theoretically, everyone could be a "winner". It's not a zero sum game. You don't need to have poor people in order for there to be wealthy people (as you mention in your post). Etc, etc.


Anyway... as for your actual question.... people should do what they love... what they have a passion for. That's a motivating factor far greater than money can ever be. That's the real drive of innovation, invention and discovery. So many people work in areas for free, be it as volunteers or as a hobby or whatever.

The fear of "losing" and/or the desire of "winning" are not really motivators for anything other than financial gain... and financial gain is not productive from a societal standpoint. In fact, it's quite often the opposite... we do things "incorrectly" for the sake of producing income and providing jobs.

Sit back and think about it for a bit... we live in a culture where "job creation" is considered a good thing. The way our economy works... it is... but in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't it be better if there were fewer jobs? If people didn't have to work themselves to death to make ends meet? We're striving for something that is so far removed from what we actually need/want.

Oregon is a good example. In order to boost employment, they have a law that says no gas stations can be self-service. You go anywhere in Oregon state and you do not pump your own gas. Someone is paid to do it for you.

What's the point of that? Is that person really contributing to society by pumping my gas? Or are we just forcing him into a miserable job so that he can be "working" because that's the way our system operates?

Quite honestly... I'd rather pay just as much in gas and have that guy be paid without having to pump my gas, so that he can do what he wants with his life.

[chrisname]

Disch wrote:

I'd rather pay just as much in gas and have that guy be paid without having to pump my gas

But that money to pay him has to come from somewhere. At the moment, it's sort of being forced on the people who run the gas station, but of course they're not stomaching the cost, they're raising their prices and pushing the cost on the customers (as is their right). If the customers weren't paying for his job through additional cost on their gas, they'd be paying for his welfare through taxes. The only real difference is that he's now unemployed, and unemployment is linked with depression. So now, on top of the welfare cost, the taxpayer is also spending on medicare for his psychiatric treatment.

I agree with you that we shouldn't put people in pointless jobs just for the sake of "fixing" an unemployment statistic, but money doesn't grow on trees (and if it did, it wouldn't be worth anything). Fixing the system so that we don't need everyone to work means completely restructuring entire societies. Plenty of European countries, particularly the Scandinavian ones, have these sorts of welfare systems and are having to massively decrease their scope because we just can't afford it any more. In the UK, the Conservative government is slowly trying to privatise health care and make it more like the US system (which is really stupid seeing as the US spends more per capita on healthcare than we do).

Personally I do think the Scandinavian brand of socialism is the next step forward but it's still far from a perfect solution that doesn't require anyone to work. Maybe some day when we have unthinking robot underlings to do all our physical labour and smart and creative people to just sort of do what they want, our job-free socialist utopia will be a reality, but right now that can't happen.

[Disch]

I agree with pretty much everything you said, chrisname.

I definitely think people should work... I just think the work being done should be "scaled back". I think it's absurd that people are expected to work 40 hours a week... that's way too much. And in reality, many people work much more than that.

It seems to me that there's more people than work that needs to be done. So instead of having so many unemployed and so many "useless jobs" we should just spread out the jobs we do have so that more people are working, but they're all working less.

[3qX21hU5]

It seems to me that there's more people than work that needs to be done. So instead of having so many unemployed and so many "useless jobs" we should just spread out the jobs we do have so that more people are working, but they're all working less.

That would be great but as of right now it is impossible. The reason that is impossible is because most businesses wouldn't be able to survive with that kind of cost.

Basically spreading out the jobs (I assume you mean a person's overall hours are cut and instead of hiring that one person that works 40 hours you hire two that work 20) would mean that you would need to increase the pay of that worker so he/she could survive.

So we would have to increase that person's wage so that he can get the same wage he was getting but now he is working half as much. So that would basically cost the company twice as much to implement that. Which they would either

a) pass off the extra cost to the consumer (which would then raise the cost of living)

b) the business just can't keep up with the cost of hiring people so they scale down or automate things which results in less employees for that company.

c) the company just goes out of business.

So you see it would be almost impossible to implement a system like this without a "reboot" of the system for lack of a better phrase. It just isn't sustainable.

It's like the debate going on in the US about raising the wage of McDonald's worker to I believe like $14-$15 dollars a hour. It just isn't possible it would put every owner of a fast food joint out of business because they couldn't afford to hire employees.

It would be nice for people to make $14-$15 dollars a hour (Though if they did I would be kind of pissed not going to lie since I worked my ass off to get a good job and study and I am not even making that much yet) but it would upset the market and would have a much wider impact then most people would think.

[chrisname]

So, let's say we spread a $10/hour, 40 hour/week job between two people who will each work 20 hours per week. Either they each have to take on a second job to get as much money as before (which they need to do unless you somehow force prices down - but then that might lower wages too), meaning they're working at least as many hours as they were beforehand and nothing has changed, or the employer has to pay them twice as much, meaning prices go up to levels that they still can't afford and nothing has changed. It comes down to a choice between high unemployment and high inflation. Taxing the rich might help you to get around that but you don't want to present an obstacle to people becoming rich because then you won't have anyone to tax, and you also have to consider the lobbying power of the rich versus the poor. The lobbying system is flawed because everyone has the right to petition the government but the rich can afford to do it much more frequently and much more effectively despite being in the minority. You would hope that the poor and middle class could hold their own through sheer numbers but when the top 1% of the population holds 35% of the wealth¹ that doesn't really work.

Ultimately, it's a broken system that needs to be replaced, but just try and find the money and time needed to do that. The rich aren't going to be the ones to fund it because it works perfectly well for them, and the poor can't fund it because they don't have the money.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#In_the_United_States

[Disch]

That would be great but as of right now it is impossible. The reason that is impossible is because most businesses wouldn't be able to survive with that kind of cost.

That's why it would have to be socialized. Capitalism is fundamentally flawed in this way.

So you see it would be almost impossible to implement a system like this without a "reboot" of the system for lack of a better phrase. It just isn't sustainable.

I understand and agree with all the points you make above this statement. Though I don't think a full "reboot" would be necessary. It can start with something simple, like government subsidizing of companies which hire more people to "split the work".

The real problem is getting around this country's demonization of socialism by the extreme right.

(Though if they did I would be kind of pissed not going to lie since I worked my ass off to get a good job and study and I am not even making that much yet)

Life isn't a competition. If a magical new law got passed where everyone in the country (including you) was making a minimum of $15/hr.. I would hope that wouldn't make you angry.

You're also assuming that the people working at McD are not working their ass off. Many of them are adults with families and are working 2-3 jobs.


EDIT:

chrisname wrote:

So, let's say we spread a $10/hour, 40 hour/week job between two people who will each work 20 hours per week. Either they each have to take on a second job to get as much money as before (which they need to do unless you somehow force prices down - but then that might lower wages too)

Or... the other option...

Instead of 10 unemployed people living off welfare and 10 people working 40 hrs/week at $10/hr, you have 20 people working 20 hrs/week at $20/hr.

Government pays the excess wage and maybe a little extra in the form of tax breaks to compensate for the hardship of having to train extra people.

Welfare costs can be greatly reduced, and the money we would spend on that can instead be spent on "work-splitting".


Ultimately for this problem to be addressed in any fashion, it has to come down to government intervention. The private sector is greedy by definition, so the more control it has on the economy the bigger the wealth gap is going to get. History has shown us that raw capitalism simply does not work... it has to be tempered with socialist policies.

[devonrevenge]

and losing gives you the kick in the butt you need to do better

the people who died in that factory in bangladesh making all those cheap clothes in that factory that collapsed were working pretty damned hard to make some share holders rich elsewhere, all this profiteering is childish and irresponsible, so they wanted the cheapest contract, but at what cost?

Face it most wealth is ill gotten.

[3qX21hU5]

Devon wrote:

the people who died in that factory in bangladesh making all those cheap clothes in that factory that collapsed were working pretty damned hard to make some share holders rich elsewhere, all this profiteering is childish and irresponsible, so they wanted the cheapest contract, but at what cost?

Face it most wealth is ill gotten.

I would say you are ignorant on the subject and blinded by what you have been told. I don't mean that as a insult but to believe that most wealth somehow comes from greedy people stomping on the poor is just completely false.

Yes you can point out the extreme instances like you have been but that is not a demonstration of wealth. That is a demonstration of a immoral human being. Any person can do heinous acts and prey upon those less/more fortune then them it doesn't matter how wealthy they are. It matters what kind of character they have.

There have been plenty of poor people that force people into labor and other extreme situations just like there have been plenty of rich people. Wealth might play a factor in some cases but in my opinion it is not the major contributor for most cases.

[Manga]

Since I have never been rich, I must think wealth is ill gotten.

I just need to find me some little people to step on. I will let you know once I am rich if it was ill gotten or not. :)

[chrisname]

Zereo wrote:

Any person can do heinous acts and prey upon those less/more fortune then them it doesn't matter how wealthy they are. It matters what kind of character they have.

This is besides the point (actually it's not even in the same room as the point). Of course anyone can do bad things, the point devonrevenge is making is that rich people undeniably exploit poor people with sweat shops and factories with horrible working conditions and that historically, with a few notable exceptions like Joseph and Seebohm Rowntree, rich industrialists have treated their workers horribly and, for the most part, only government regulation has changed that.

There have been plenty of poor people that force people into labor and other extreme situations

Name one poor person who enslaved, exploited or forced-into-labour rich people. There are many examples, historically and contemporarily of rich people doing the reverse. A poor person wouldn't have the wealth or power to do it. There are, of course, examples of poor people involved with kidnapping, ransoming and terrorism but in all cases they do it either as a last resort (as in the case of Somalian pirates and Hamas) or for extremism (in which case they're often led by rich people - look at al Qaeda). The fact of the matter is, poor people simply don't have the power or the resources to execute the systematic, institutionalised exploitation that rich entrepreneurs and industrialists have done globally for millennia and are still doing now, particularly in the less developed world where the lack of a stable, legitimate (not corrupt) government leaves them totally at the mercy of the greedy rich and the powerful.

Of course I'm not suggesting all rich people are bad or exploitative, but to blow it off because "any person can do heinous acts" is ridiculous. It's institutionalised exploitation of those less fortunate and it's inexcusable.

[3qX21hU5]

Well I don't really think anything I could say would make a difference with this one so I will just bow out on this debate. Though find it quite sad how success in this country is demonized to such a degree. But anyways with that I will take my leave from this thread.

[Disch]

Do you remember like ~5 years ago when the rich nearly destroyed the world economy due to excess greed? Then taxpayers had to pay a bunch of money to fix it? And there were literally no repercussions for those involved?

Perhaps that's partly why it's demonized so much.

[N36fSL3A]

Why is Steve Jobs the good guy?

He was a normal man surrounded by brilliant people.

[devonrevenge]

too much is always a bad thing, its wrong that big business owns the government, just look at the demographic of the majority of the people in your country and then look at the demographic of the people those in power support the most and then look at that politicians background, im talking about excessive cronyism and the poor representation of the majority of people who work the hardest.