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Pastimes : My House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (2698)	10/15/2002 10:08:32 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7689

"Both would be equally accurate" Yes, IF we were talking about the accuracy respectively about who pays most in taxes, and who has the most wealth. But my remark was concerning what was the most "accurate to say: the accuracy of what is most pertinent as regards a discussion in which bare facts may or may not inform or distort the larger issues involved. There is certainly nothing erroneous in your literal interpretation. Only I meant it figuratively which is the reason why I phrased it the way I did. Essentially our disagreement (if indeed there is one) is not about who has the most wealth, or who pays the most in taxes--but about whether or not the rich may or may not pay a proportionally unjust amount in relation to their wealth. "High tax rates, even high tax rates for the rich alone, will do little to help the angry man holding the shovel to make any headway." Again, you are not reading the context. My comment followed the comment: "if one wishes to keep the gap between rich and poor at a level which will not prompt revolution and civil strife." That is the reason I was adducing for the observation that "it is important for those who are ruled to believe they are making headway from time to time. Nothing worse than an angry man holding a shovel..." I was not suggesting that the working poor had any reasonable chance of getting ahead. "The military gets about 3% of our GDP" Actually, a bit more. And the individual income taxes cover about 9 or 10 % of GDP do they not? And corporate taxes about 2%? So clearly tax rates impact on the GDP and clearly they are essential to the purchase of goods and services and the equitable delivery of resources which benefit society as a whole. I presume we are not at odds over the concept of "society"? I can understand your desire not to impede investment, but certainly society requires a mechanism for alleviating human suffering, and for mitigating the most extreme exploitation. So would you favour the elimination of all income tax for a consumption tax, then...with necessaries of life having the most minimal tax attached? I assume you wish to be fair to the social structure which supports you, but you simply wish to have a mechanism which you feel is equitable, right? "I didn't (and still don't) think she would actually still want the rich to get hit hard by tax increases and not benefit much by tax cuts if the rich had much higher rates then they do now. Then she actually stated that she wouldn't want the rich to pay almost 100%, so I have tried to show here the logical contradiction between her two statements." The statement above clarifies that you recognize there was no logical contradiction in the intended meaning of her statements but only in your literal interpretation of them. As you said, you correctly surmised her use of hyperbole from square one. Now, if I told you that I hoped the night would never end, you would understand very well what I meant; although with a few questions you could likely involve me in an innocent contradiction which you could then point out to me. Again...I think someone really rich, who does not give anything to charity or society, should be drawn and quartered and run over and backed over about 7 times. Just kidding! I don't really think that--just a bit of figurative hyperbole' Tim! "The statement was a response to your statement about how tax cuts are not needed (and presumably would be a bad thing) because the rich are not hurting for money." Not my statement. It was a quote I addended as a lead-in to some links I had given you. "The fact that lower taxes help increase long term economic growth and also that it is wrong to seize a big chunk of someone's income or wealth even if they are rich." The former is not a cost benefit analysis of lower taxes but merely a simplistic distortion which ignores the drawbacks to lower taxes. For instance, with no taxes at all who would fund the police force? And the latter of your statement refers to communism not capitalism. "You want the social security system to go bankrupt?" No, I don't. But neither your question nor my answer has any relevance to the question I asked you, to wit: "why should anybody care?" "a lot of people have planned their future based on the promises made by the program and those in or near retirement don't have deacdes to save up to fund their retirement themselves" OK. I see you are answering it here. People are important you seem to be saying...