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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (81502)	8/23/2010 4:19:55 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 149317

Well at least you finally admit the disparity exists. And I also admit the sky is blue. Yes rich people have more income and wealth than the not-rich, that's pretty much the definition of rich, not much to "admit". Another way to favor the rich was to reduce the rate at which they were taxed As long as they are still paying a higher rate (and they do) reducing the amount you tax them is only reducing the amount you disfavor them. Another way to favor the rich was to reduce the rate at which they were taxed......which is what happened starting under Reagan. The rich stated to pay more in taxes after the changes made by Reagan. Their rates (mostly) went down, but the high rates before discouraged investment and work from the rich, and channeled the effort in to tax avoidance and evasion. 70% top tax rates will do that. The income group that started to pay less was the "working poor" who in many cases started to be dropped from having to pay any net income tax at all. We do have the government push for narrow special interests that tend to be made up of very rich people. The government bails out, subsidizes, protects from competition, or otherwise tries to help these narrow special interests, but broadly it tilts the scales against the wealthy, just not as much as you want it to do so. But that's not a loss of economic freedom. That's just another way to favor the rich......like tax cuts. It is itself a loss of economic freedom, it the process of more economic decisions being made by the government. It also what's encouraged by other types of losses of economic freedom. Generally the more things get decided by the government the harder special interests fight to control those decisions. As P. J. O'Rourke said - "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators" As for tax cuts, broad based tax cuts don't favor the rich, they cut taxes for everyone. Even tax cuts specifically just for the rich don't result in a situation where the rich are favored, if the rich are still paying higher taxes than the non-rich (and they are). And over the last 30 years, the people primarily in power are the Rs The Democrats have controlled congress for much of that time, and they've controlled the presidency for some of it. In any case the points I'm making have nothing to do with partisanship. Politicians of both parties have decreased our freedom, while shifting resources to narrow special interests. What they have not been generally doing is broadly favoring the rich. In the meantime, the lower classes have seen their incomes stagnate [after inflation is factored in]. Household income has only grown very slowly but households are smaller, and also not all income is being counted in official figures. And over the long term such a slowdown in growth (not real stagnation) is less likely to happen with more economic freedom. As for stealing, tax cuts are not stealing anything. Its not the government's money, tax cut's reduce the amount of stealing going on. Your version of economic freedom penalizes the little guy at the benefit the big guys. It doesn't penalize the little guy it benefits the little guy, and every other broad group.