In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:



But we don't tax on wealth (at least yet, although I suppose the case
could be made that the estate tax comes close).

Wait. What would make it NOT a tax on wealth. If you inherit over X
dollars, Uncle Sam and his state cousins will have their hand out for a big
chunk. We've also had a round of luxury taxes in the US that some talk
about reviving even though the results were not what the Feds expected.
Both are taxes poor people can only wish they'd have to pay. Mostly what
the poor inherit is the cost of burying their parents and getting phone
calls from creditors trying to convince them they're liable for their
parent's debts. They are not, but many pay anyway.
I was giving the estate tax the benefit of the doubt because I did
not want to debate the issue with a few hundred people (g).
"Not what the Feds expected" is sorta of an understatement. They
generally end up costing poor people jobs since the rich can go
elsewhere for their toys. These are mainly punitive type taxes anyway.



The facts are and always
will be, that on INCOME taxes, the rich payer a higher percentage of
their income on taxes than the poor do. (Okay maybe not always, but
always under the current system).

Don't you mean that they are "supposed to pay a higher percentage?" Warren
Buffet strenuously claims the reverse of what you are saying is true.
Buffet says he pays a lower overall percentage than his staff.
ANd the stats strenously show that is cherry picking. The IRS stats
say otherwise.



http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...-secretary-pay
-higher-taxes-millionaire/

Interesting that one of his people pays 6% more in taxes than the
highest bracket and the average is 1% more. Adding back in the FICA 6.2%
employee contribution-- which is disingenous since it is a payroll tax
that is (supposed to anyway) be returned in benefits, not an income tax,
and has always been discussed separately from income taxes--means most
of his secretaries are paid north of $70k a year (assuming married
filing jointly.




I don't get how. We, again, are talking wealth and that has nothing
to do with the relative progressiveness of taxes. If you want to
regulate wealth by taxation you have to make it VERY regressive at the
top end. Which is a whole ball of policy wax.

Indeed. Very steep taxes for the uber-rich may eventually come to pass as
the gulf between American's richest and poorest people widens. I don't know
where the answers lie, just that there are some troubling issues to be dealt
with, like people with skills willing to work but unable to find jobs. You
know there's trouble when Wal*mart advertises for 100 new positions and gets
10,000 applicants, even with crappy benefits. They are also pros at hiring
mostly part time workers whom they don't have to pay ANY health bennies.
Which in a whole different bowl of policy fruit from taxing the top 1%
solely BECAUSE they are top 1% (well actually that and because they ****
certain people off).


OWS might finally convince Wall St. that if they can't rein in excessive CEO
compensation, they run the risk of Congress doing it for them. While you've
talked about how that's been a failure, given enough time, they could close
the necessary loopholes to make it so. In the long run, very few people are
going to vote for taxing themselves and not the uber-rich. As you've noted,
when they're compensated in stock, that devalues every other shareholder's
investment. With so damn few people supporting it, I find it amazing that
it not only persists, but appears to be growing each year.

They could, maybe. This does, however, show that when Congress tries
to do one thing (the original concept was to reign in CEO pay and align
their interests with shareholders) they quite often do another. I'd be
concerned about making things worse if you let the Great Minds on
Capital Hill loose on this issue again.


HeyBub, IIRC, is fond of saying Obama's stimulus money just disappeared.
A lot of it did. But then I can't say any more than the normal level
of graft built into the system.


between OWS and the Tea Party is who they blame for the 2008 crash. Another
interesting column by David Brooks talks about whether we're really the
rational agents that economic theories often rely on:


Unfortunately, business is well aware of these foibles and uses them to
sell, sell, sell. That pressure pushes a lot of people to think they need
something they really don't. Part of the great real estate crisis was the
belief that owning a home was a one-way ticket to wealth and that houses
will always rise in cost. It sadly parallels the belief that a college
diploma is an automatic ticket to wealth.
Both of which are also falacies promoted by the political class, too. Of
course, we sometimes (okay usually) forget that politics is a business
just like any others. Buying and selling influence and laws. Politicians
tell us (at least that section of "us" that is likely to vote for them)
exactly what we want to hear and tell us we need them.


We're going to eventually see a debate about "where wealth comes from" and
whether accumulated wealth should be taxed heavily to prevent so much money
from concentrating in the hands of so few that the economy locks up. Henry
Ford presciently said he paid his workers a good wage so that they could
afford to buy his products. Turning that premise on its head, Wal*mart just
announced it's cutting back on the meager health benefits that it pays its
workers. If people can't work hard and become successful, the American
Dream is dying. And people at Wal*mart work pretty damn hard to get mostly
nowhere. That worries me.

Yep because popluar revolutions seldom do damage only to the parts they
are revolting about.


Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled its latest charges involving
mortgage-backed securities. In what may be a new low for conduct by a major
Wall Street firm in the walk-up to the financial crisis, Citigroup settled
charges (without admitting or denying guilt) that it defrauded investors by
creating a package of mortgage-backed securities for which it selected a
pool of mortgages likely to default, bet against the security for the bank's
benefit by shorting it and then foisted it off on unwitting investors
without disclosing any of this. According to the S.E.C., one trader
characterized this particular security in an all-too-candid e-mail as
"possibly the best short EVER!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/bu...om-simple-to-c
omplex.html?ref=todayspaper

"Without admitting to guilt." A blind man could "see" their guilt with his
cane.
That's fraud and there are already rather nasty laws on the books
to cover that. The REAL point that OWS has is the inability (or should I
say unwillingness) of the current system to actually enforce laws
already on the books.


If you're saying the middle class is still A-OK, I've got to strongly
disagree. When Wal*mart ****s (oops, shifts!) the burden of health care
costs onto the backs of its middle and lower class employees, they are
taking a serious pay cut. Wal*mart stockholders (whom I believe are mostly
upper class and wealthy) gain, middle and lower class workers lose. That
same scene is being repeated all across America. It's a recipe for social
disaster. Part of the reason fewer jobs are open to young people is that
older folks have determined they HAVE to keep on working until they can't
work anymore just to be sure to have enough to survive their old age.
This was going to be a problem as the Boomers Aged no matter what
happened otherwise. Just too many of them saving too little (through
most of our working years, the savings rate went down) and spending too
much.


What bothers me is the banks and Wall Streets resistance to reinstating some
sort of law that would reduce the exposure of FDIC insured banks from huge
speculative losses.
It is their job (actually if you look at the securities law their
fudiciary duty) to make as much as possible. The fact that they get a
bunch of it personally only makes it more intense. It isn't their
responsibility to fall on their sword and probably goes against human
nature. (g).


Heck, if you bought into the Prevailing Wisdom, even the bad loans
were a great idea since (both sides of the equation thought) the house
HAS to be worth a lot more in a couple of years than it was now. So, the
homeowner KNEW that they would be able to sell the house for more than
the balloon payment or that their salary HAD to keep going up. The worst
case scenario for the lenders was they foreclosed and got a house to
resell on the cheap. (There were similar idiocies on the general
business side)

Until there were so many foreclosures that they collapsed the entire market.
All of this is nothing more than a classic bubble. The problem this
last time is that we had such a good run (over 20-30 years) that the
economy itself became a bubble.



So what you're saying is look for a turn-around in 2016. I might not even
know who I am by 2016. Perhaps it's time to spend while I can still
appreciate it. Actually, Medicare will pressure me to spend wildly and
divorce my wife just to be eligible for nursing home care. We keep joking
that we should get divorced now so it won't be considered a sham divorce.
Three years claw back. I, seriously, would get an elder law attorney
involved while you still can.


Yet we are ignoring the single biggest unfunded liability, the SS
"surplus"

Well, if we're ignoring the liability of the states, why not the much larger
one? They're all invisible elephants in the room.

They are not invisible. It is just that the politicians and us have
erected a "Somebody Else's Problem field? (g).

For those of you not fans of The Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy:
An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let
us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain
just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly
you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is
to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.
The technology involved in making something properly invisible is
so mind-bogglingly complex that 999,999,999 times out of a billion it's
simpler just to take the thing away and do without it....... The
"Somebody Else's Problem field" is much simpler, more effective, and
"can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery."
This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to
see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.


the equivalent of economic anti-gravity. When I grew up, most fathers
worked, most women stayed at home and we enjoyed a comfortable standard
of
living. Now, to enjoy that same standard, both parents have to work.

Houses are now almost 1/4 bigger than they were in the 50s (although
that might be heading back down). We have internet, A/C, regulations
adding something like $1500 to the cost of a car and around $7500 to the
cost of a house, etc. etc. We are enjoying a better standard and for
that both have to work.

Is it really that much better? The fact that the poor have such "amenities"
now indicates that the baseline has moved, but that a higher income is not
necessarily required to have those things.
Overall is sort of a personal decision. But these are some of the
reasons why most mothers can no longer stay at home.




--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz