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Do We Really Need To Do Income Redistribution To Fix Income Inequality?

Moderate Right

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I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
 
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?

The gulf between the poor and the rich is vast, and there are very few oppertunity for advancement for those with lower income.

It does not matter if the poor are given the tools to dig themselves out of their holes when the holes are as deep as the Mariana Trench.
 
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?

I really don't think it is about giving to the poor as much as limiting the wealth gap by keeping the net worth of the 1% from continuing to explode at current unsustainable rates. It is the increasingly huge wealth gap that is a danger to democratic capitalism.

The ultra-rich are staggeringly wealthy. A recent Oxfam report revealed that the richest 85 people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the world—that is, their $1.8 trillion is equal to the net worth of 3.5 billion people. Further, the wealthiest 1% own $110 trillion, or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world.

5 Fixes for Dangerous Wealth Inequality | Sustainability Advantage
 
The "tools" for economic success that depend on exploiting those who are poorer than you will result in an economic rift which is widened by supply side economics.

Government subsidies for corporations or banks did not end poverty on a broad scale, rather they "helped" local regions through private spending. So redistribution of income to suit the needs of business is not one of those tools because it does not directly or indirectly empower people. It allows businesses to empower people they want to hire, yes, but it disproportionately rewards those people outside the business who have non-business ties to successful members of that business.

Discretionary spending and private spending are two different things. However that does not mean that private citizens are better suited to teach skills for success than public relations with government agencies. The institution of government is meant to represent wealthy people and poor people in a Democratic Republic. It's in the best interest of the government for it's citizens to succeed.

We've seen that it's in the best interest of individuals who represent their fellow Americans in Congress to accept bribery. So when Congress cannot trust itself to do the right thing, measures are taken to fix inequality. Income tax and capital gains tax are good examples of this.

Business is competitive, but a pyramid scheme is not. We need income redistribution where neo-liberalism has failed.
 
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?

And exactly what are these magical "free" tools that you speak of. As right wing nuts are fond of stating you cannot give someone something for free without taking it from someone else. So please enlighten us on how you plan to pull these awesome tools out of your magical freedom hat....

"Robbing" denotes something that is a crime. If the law states that congress has the right to lay and collect taxes there is no crime whatsoever being committed. Taxes are the dues you pay for membership in a society. They are the HOA fees of the Gated community known as America. The wealthy have clearly benefited exponentially more from the institution that is the United States of America. It would then only seem logical that they contribute exponentially more for it's up keep.

The reality is that about 90% of what the government does is defend rich people from poor people. Some of the defense is provided for using guns, soldiers and police. The rest is done simply by making sure their is a safety net to keep people from becoming desperate in the first place, and by investing in things like public education to insure the poor have the exact tools you're claiming to want to give them.

Just the other day I saw a post from the Libertarian Party to Bernie Sanders supporters trying to get them to vote for Gary Johnson. Their moronic argument was that rather than make college free they should eliminate government subsided education entirely. In order to make it cheaper. While it is true that would likely make education cheaper for the people who could still manage to afford it(those who are already rich). It would accomplish this by eliminating a ton of demand for education coming from those who can no longer afford it(the poor).

So please do not give us this bull**** absurdity about how you want to give the poor the tools they need to succeed, it is people like yourself that are trying to take those tools away to consolidate more power for yourself.

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As an aside, I saw a guy at the pool this weekend wearing a Reagan/Bush '84 shirt. The pool was packed and him and is girlfriend were struggling to find a chair. I told him if he found a chair he should give it to me and my friends since we had plenty of chairs we'd make sure some trickled down to him. He didn't like that idea for some reason.
 
The gulf between the poor and the rich is vast, and there are very few oppertunity for advancement for those with lower income.

The gulf is indeed wide between the poor and the rich, however, the poor have a multitude of opportunities for advancement. The problem is more that the government often punishes and discourages them from doing so.

It does not matter if the poor are given the tools to dig themselves out of their holes when the holes are as deep as the Mariana Trench.

:roll: If you make $32,000 a year, you are in the global 1%. Our "poor" lead lives that most humanity would envy.
 
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?

A good TED Talk on something that strikes at the root of this question.
 
And exactly what are these magical "free" tools that you speak of. As right wing nuts are fond of stating you cannot give someone something for free without taking it from someone else. So please enlighten us on how you plan to pull these awesome tools out of your magical freedom hat....

Usually it involves reforming our current expenditures to flow in such a manner as to create fewer destructive incentives for our poor, and to better enable them to actually climb out of poverty. Not punishing them for getting married or getting a raise, for example, or not trapping them in failing school systems.

Robbing" denotes something that is a crime. If the law states that congress has the right to lay and collect taxes there is no crime whatsoever being committed. Taxes are the dues you pay for membership in a society. They are the HOA fees of the Gated community known as America. The wealthy have clearly benefited exponentially more from the institution that is the United States of America. It would then only seem logical that they contribute exponentially more for it's up keep.

The reality is that about 90% of what the government does is defend rich people from poor people.

Actually most of what the federal government does is give stuff to old people (Social Security, Medicaid, Retirees). Another 10% is Safety Net Programs, another 6% is interest on the debt, and 16% is defense. If you add up state and federal, we spend a little more than a Trillion Dollars a Year on means-tested programs ($746 Bn of which is Federal).

Some of the defense is provided for using guns, soldiers and police. The rest is done simply by making sure their is a safety net to keep people from becoming desperate in the first place, and by investing in things like public education to insure the poor have the exact tools you're claiming to want to give them.

Just the other day I saw a post from the Libertarian Party to Bernie Sanders supporters trying to get them to vote for Gary Johnson. Their moronic argument was that rather than make college free they should eliminate government subsided education entirely. In order to make it cheaper. While it is true that would likely make education cheaper for the people who could still manage to afford it(those who are already rich). It would accomplish this by eliminating a ton of demand for education coming from those who can no longer afford it(the poor).

So please do not give us this bull**** absurdity about how you want to give the poor the tools they need to succeed, it is people like yourself that are trying to take those tools away to consolidate more power for yourself.

This, of course, is partisan bull. The right is chock-a-block with ideas and proposals on how to help the poor.

As an aside, I saw a guy at the pool this weekend wearing a Reagan/Bush '84 shirt. The pool was packed and him and is girlfriend were struggling to find a chair. I told him if he found a chair he should give it to me and my friends since we had plenty of chairs we'd make sure some trickled down to him. He didn't like that idea for some reason.

:) So you're an asshole to people you disagree with. How astonishing.
 
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I think this might be a case of the medicine being far worse for the nation than the symptoms.
(In the sense of government forced redistribution).
 
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?

Liberals tend to think in terms of zero-sum games. That means that in order to build up one sector of society, you have to bring down another. There are places where this works and places where it doesn't work. Income inequality is one of those places where it doesn't work. The solution is to bring everyone up, not push some down and build others up, but to build everyone up. Put resources to work and create jobs, create a more competitive job market by creating a more competitive business environment. Those are the kinds of solutions that work, the whole "take from the rich and give to the poor until there are no rich any more" mentality only leads to everyone being poor.
 
Liberals tend to think in terms of zero-sum games. That means that in order to build up one sector of society, you have to bring down another. There are places where this works and places where it doesn't work. Income inequality is one of those places where it doesn't work. The solution is to bring everyone up, not push some down and build others up, but to build everyone up. Put resources to work and create jobs, create a more competitive job market by creating a more competitive business environment. Those are the kinds of solutions that work, the whole "take from the rich and give to the poor until there are no rich any more" mentality only leads to everyone being poor.

Indeed.

Don't think that flooding the nation with no skill / low skilled workers is really a means for pushing everyone up. Seems more like a means of pushing everyone down, and pushing the most challenged down the hardest / most.
 
Please. Conservative morality is a sick joke. There is a reason they need religion in order to enforce it. Brainwashing people and convincing them to accept what is told to them on blind faith is the only way to make something so idiotic and irrational seem perfectly acceptable.

Nice to see that your bigotry stays so consistent. It provides a kind of baseline for minimum civilized behavior that we all compare ourselves to. So if I'm at a -4.6 Wonkas of bigotry, I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for setting such a consistent (and low) bar to compare ourselves to. I know that it probably takes a lot of work to maintain that level of consistent bigotry, so I'd just like to thank you for the effort.
 
This, of course, is partisan bull. The right is chock-a-block with ideas and proposals on how to help the poor.
All of which some how oddly involve giving themselves more money and asking you to trust them to let it trickle down to you. If you want someone to have something just give it to them directly to begin with.

So you're an asshole to people you disagree with. How astonishing.

No, only the idiots who walk around brandishing their stupidity in full view of the world confidently believing themselves wise. You see unlike conservatives I wouldn't treat someone like **** just for being born a certain way - even if the way they were born was stupid and conservative - I wait until you arrogantly promote your stupidity and impose it on others before I judge you. But once I know your the type of person who would hurt others via your stupidity then the figurative gloves kind of come off.
 
Please. Conservative morality is a sick joke.

:) Actually it turns out that Conservatives speak a more diverse moral language than Liberals do, as they accept more moral values.

Naturally, people such as yourself (who are both liberal, but also partisanly blind) refer to that as a "sick joke".

There is a reason they need religion in order to enforce it. Brainwashing people and convincing them to accept what is told to them on blind faith is the only way to make something so idiotic and irrational seem perfectly acceptable.

:shrug:

1. You don't need religion to be Conservative, nor does having a faith make you conservative. My father, for example, is moderate-liberal and a Methodist Pastor.
2. I don't know anyone in Christianity (at least, as that is who I am most familiar with) who holds to the faith because they believe blindly in what they are told. That is a false stereotype about believers held by atheists.
 
All of which some how oddly involve giving themselves more money and asking you to trust them to let it trickle down to you.

Nope. :) In fact, conservatives tend to argue that the government shouldn't be in the business of giving money to the wealthy, whether that's reforming Social Security to bend down the top tranche of benefits, or getting them out of picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

If you want someone to have something just give it to them directly to begin with.

Funny you should say so. That argument is at the exact center of several conservative reform proposals, including my own. :)

No, only the idiots who walk around brandishing their stupidity in full view of the world confidently believing themselves wise.

:) Oh. You mean like the kind of idiot who would think that someone wearing a t-shirt with the name of a couple of politicians they didn't like justified them in being a jerk?

Bit of a log in your eye there, brother. :)
 
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What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
Participation and diversification. Wealth is created by the diverse exchange of it. The more we trade wealth in diverse ways amongst different economic actors, the more wealth we create.

In other words, just a handful of wealthy people having the capacity to build themselves a house or multiple houses doesn't do a population of a million people any lick of good. Obviously there's some value created, but that impact is limited. Only a tiny minority of families are housed. Only a tiny amount of homebuilders earned an income; and only a tiny amount of house cleaners, landscapers, plumbers, etc. can be supported by those few homes. Besides what are those very wealthy people going to do with their leftover wealth after the house is built? Build a hundred more that they don't need? Spend it on the one or two things that interest them?

No, the stronger economic activity comes when those millions of people are each enabled to build themselves a home because there's a level of distribution that has done this. Huge majorities of families can then be housed. Thousands of homebuilders are able to make a living. So are the thousands of house cleaners, landscapers and plumbers. Even better, these millions of people have many, many more hours of time and a myriad of interests than just a couple wealthy people. If those millions of people have wealth to pursue their intrests, they'll be able to come up with many more creative ways and to spend and invest their wealth than just a tiny few.

...

At the same time income inequality is also necessary. If everyone always had wealth and the same amount of wealth, it'd push up demand and drive inflation. Likewise inequality is also an incentive maker for people to work hard which translates to an increase in economic activity. Therefore we have to have some level of income inequality.

However the problem as of late is that our wealth is getting way too pooled and concentrated. The millions of people are becoming less and less enabled to contribute to the economy their millions of creative ways to spend and invest. So we're relying much more on the economic activities of just a tiny few building houses instead of benefiting from the activities of millions building houses.
 
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What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
Rhetorical bs, since 79 we started on the road back to the Gilded Age, we have surpassed it. What has resulted is that when wages have been depressed for these near 40 years is the level of personal debt climbs just to maintain your present living standard. When your investment that was paid for by debt collapses, you end up with the new normal of slow growth/low investment because demand is depressed. These are all the result of inequalities in the ability to capture the wealth produced, where the gains are realized by your beloved wealthy. The conservative mindset of licking the boot of authority (the wealthy) extends to all sorts of self defeating ideas, not looking out for your own interests.....instead obsessing over the interests of the overlord. Conservatives are the true lackey, the real serf.
 
The gulf is indeed wide between the poor and the rich, however, the poor have a multitude of opportunities for advancement. The problem is more that the government often punishes and discourages them from doing so.



:roll: If you make $32,000 a year, you are in the global 1%. Our "poor" lead lives that most humanity would envy.

By "our poor," I assume you mean poor Americans, and that includes homeless people just like in other less fortunate areas of humanity. Pointing out a class of humanity which is less economically successful doesn't make your position any better. It's a basic appeal to emotion when you put it like that.

Liberals tend to think in terms of zero-sum games. That means that in order to build up one sector of society, you have to bring down another. There are places where this works and places where it doesn't work. Income inequality is one of those places where it doesn't work. The solution is to bring everyone up, not push some down and build others up, but to build everyone up. Put resources to work and create jobs, create a more competitive job market by creating a more competitive business environment. Those are the kinds of solutions that work, the whole "take from the rich and give to the poor until there are no rich any more" mentality only leads to everyone being poor.

Wait, let me just make sure I'm getting this correctly. Conservatives justify poor people by saying that everyone would be poor if some people weren't poor? Well by golly, everyone being poor means everyone is rich, too. Being more wealthy than the guy with nothing doesn't make one wealthy, and it doesn't justify stopping income redistribution. Why do poor conservatives support policies that make the rich richer at their expense? Because they think that money is going to good ol' boys. There's no two ways about it, you conservatives (in this thread) are totally partisan - and at the expense of reason on issues that affect you.
 
By "our poor," I assume you mean poor Americans, and that includes homeless people just like in other less fortunate areas of humanity. Pointing out a class of humanity which is less economically successful doesn't make your position any better. It's a basic appeal to emotion when you put it like that.

No, it is an appeal to reality. Our homeless are generally so because of mental health issues more than lack of economic opportunity (there are agreeably plenty of exceptions). That being said, man's natural state is brutish, impoverished, and short. Our poor benefit from the fact that our society is fabulously wealthy, and so we are able to lift their standard of living to that that would be the envy of their ancestors or their counterparts overseas. We shouldn't romanticize or exaggerate their position - instead we should shape reality with a sober awareness of reality, and our ability (and likely unintended consequences) to impact it.

Wait, let me just make sure I'm getting this correctly. Conservatives justify poor people by saying that everyone would be poor if some people weren't poor?

Sort of. We point out that, when you try to make poor people richer explicitly by tearing down those who are wealthier, you don't actually help the system, you tend to make it poorer. It isn't a zero sum game, but leftists often treat it like it is.

For example, I am happily fat. I spent about a decade or so having to exercise for an hour or two (or three, or four, or sometimes more) a day as part of my job, and now that I am passed that part of my life, I haven't run a mile flat out for two years. It's wonderful.

That being said, I'm fat. For a conservatives, blaming rich people for those in poverty is like blaming skinny people for me being fat. The answer isn't to force fit people to eat more twinkies and exercise less, that just makes society fatter. The answer is to get me back into the gym, and maybe get me to lay off the deserts for a bit.
 
Our "poor" lead lives that most humanity would envy.

No, it is an appeal to reality. Our homeless are generally so because of mental health issues more than lack of economic opportunity (there are agreeably plenty of exceptions). That being said, man's natural state is brutish, impoverished, and short. Our poor benefit from the fact that our society is fabulously wealthy, and so we are able to lift their standard of living to that that would be the envy of their ancestors or their counterparts overseas. We shouldn't romanticize or exaggerate their position - instead we should shape reality with a sober awareness of reality, and our ability (and likely unintended consequences) to impact it.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear.

Our "poor" lead lives that most humanity would envy.
This is an appeal to emotion. Putting it directly after a statistic (you did not cite) does not make it any less so, or evidence your premise that poor people are poor because those poor, poor people are so poor. No matter how you try to understand why poor people got to where they are, or romanticize the wealthy, you will not fix it by pointing fingers. You're welcome to say that all homeless people are crazy to be poor, but making a broad sweeping generalization about the ultra poor doesn't seem to have any implication for your claim about poor people in general. In fact, it would be quite rude to say that all poor people are crazy, but you're not doing that, are you? You're saying poverty can be fixed and you've got the tools to do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

Sort of. We point out that, when you try to make poor people richer explicitly by tearing down those who are wealthier, you don't actually help the system, you tend to make it poorer. It isn't a zero sum game, but leftists often treat it like it is.

For example, I am happily fat. I spent about a decade or so having to exercise for an hour or two (or three, or four, or sometimes more) a day as part of my job, and now that I am passed that part of my life, I haven't run a mile flat out for two years. It's wonderful.

That being said, I'm fat. For a conservatives, blaming rich people for those in poverty is like blaming skinny people for me being fat. The answer isn't to force fit people to eat more twinkies and exercise less, that just makes society fatter. The answer is to get me back into the gym, and maybe get me to lay off the deserts for a bit.

This is hugely oversimplifying poverty by the principle that success is an end to which there is a means which does not include poverty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
 
Nice to see that your bigotry stays so consistent. It provides a kind of baseline for minimum civilized behavior that we all compare ourselves to. So if I'm at a -4.6 Wonkas of bigotry, I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for setting such a consistent (and low) bar to compare ourselves to. I know that it probably takes a lot of work to maintain that level of consistent bigotry, so I'd just like to thank you for the effort.

big·ot·ry
ˈbiɡətrē/
noun
intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.

Bigotry requires that we have a difference of opinion. Increasingly in this country it is clear that conservatives and liberals do not have a difference of opinion. Conservatives seem to want their own set of facts. Nobody is entitled to their own facts.

Take our OP here. He seems to want to claim that we should give poor people magical free "tools" to succeed, yet he doesn't seem to want the wealthy to have to pay anything for these magic tools. If these magical free tools existed or were so easy to create then why on gods green earth would the poor even exist in the first place? In the real non-magical world it is democrats who are supporting and trying to provide access to the poor to get a better education. That however costs money, and it is conservatives who trying to stop us from spending it. These are facts.

Or an even better more glaring example. Today conservative politicians and right wing pundits are going around claiming we need to fight islam, and operate under the assumption that all Muslims are evil people who need to be suspected. Last week however those same people were claiming to honor one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. A man who was born in America, converted to Islam and refused to fight in Vietnam because his peaceful religion forbid him to do it. In his day the same types of ignorant nationalistic conservative morons called him a Radical Muslim just like they are accusing other modern day Muslims who didn't win the Heavy Weight Championship of the World. Muhammad Ali's life proves unequivocally that the things most conservatives believe about Muslims are completely 100% false. This is a fact(not an opinion) that not one week after burying Ali conservatives are choosing to ignore.
 
The difference in opinion on how to handle the issue of wealth distribution starts with the perception of the classic liberal and the classic conservative. Liberals view the results as the standard for fairness. Ideally, if they could see perfectly even distribution a crossed the board, they would consider the results to be fair. Conservatives look at the process. If the process allows for anyone to succeed, they view the results as fair, regardless of the distribution.

I, obviously, fall in the conservative camp. If the process is fair, then the results are not germane. When the process is fair, any inequality in results is the fruit of that individual's efforts. To punish those that succeeded under fair circumstances without a clear and concise conviction of that individual's actions is inherently unjust. To me, and probably most conservatives, the best way to restore income equality in the USA is the bring free trade to an end (replaced with fair tariffs based on living standards), reduce corporate tax rates to make our country more attractive and severely punish businesses that use illegal aliens for labor. This three pronged attack on our economy has stymied us for long enough. We can do this without causing a trade war, increasing the deficit or being racist (all of which are the baseless attacks you will see around the political arena). I would also change the way our schools are run to reduce class and campus sizes, reduce standardized testing and fund classroom technology.
 
I really don't think it is about giving to the poor as much as limiting the wealth gap by keeping the net worth of the 1% from continuing to explode at current unsustainable rates. It is the increasingly huge wealth gap that is a danger to democratic capitalism.

Precisely. As I've often said the problem with conservatives is that they've been living in a civilized society for so long they do not truly appreciate all of the benefits that it provides. Inequality breeds jealousy and resentment. In order for 1% to maintain their wealth they are dependent on the other 99% of the world to sit back and let them have it. Pissing them off and rubbing your wealth in the faces of the poor is a very bad idea. Paying taxes to help those who are struggling is a very very small price to pay to maintain your already insane advantage. If you do not voluntarily keep the masses happy pretty soon they will take all of your wealth from you, and on that day I assure you that the wealthy will be desperate to go back to a time where they only gave up half.
 
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor.
Taxes are not robbery, kthx.

And yes, leftists believe that some of the effects of income inequality can be addressed by the redistribution of income. It keeps the socioeconomic and political power of the wealthy in check, and also provides services and safety nets needed by the poor. It is also readily apparent that cutting taxes for the rich, as we've done for the past 40 years, deeply intensifies economic inequality.

Oh, and yeah, the tax rates paid by the wealthy? They've gone down repeatedly in the past 40 years, yet it's not enough. No tax cut is ever enough.

happy-returns-630-wm.jpg



Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich.
Sorry, but I call shenanigans.

The right has many issues with redistribution unrelated to who foots the bill, such as:
• They don't want to give anyone "something for nothing"
• Many don't understand that education and safety nets are public goods
• They do not want to do anything to empower government, especially federal governments
• It gets in the way of blaming the poor for their economic condition / acknowledges structural issues causing poverty


What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it?
Wrong? There's nothing wrong with that.

The problem is that giving people those tools cost money. So who's going to pay for it?

Plus, I for one have seen very little interest on the part of conservatives to "give poor people the tools they need." They spend most of their time trying to destroy what is left of the safety nets, and blaming the poor (and/or liberals) for their economic condition.


What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
Uh, yeah, "helping the poor climb up" is exactly what leftists want to do. The problem is that someone has to pay for it. We ask the rich to pay, because a great deal of their surplus capital relies on all these other people, and a broad array of public goods.

It's also not really clear what you're proposing. If anything, it sounds like you just don't want the wealthy to pay taxes, and let the poor sink or swim. And that doesn't work.

As the rich get richer, the system increasingly tilts in their favor. Politicians bend to their will, as they can easily bribe those officials (legally or illegally) to do their bidding -- or they run for office. They start to monopolize resources in education, medical care, property, legal representation, police protection, corporate governance, and more.

This produces myriad imbalances. E.g. if a poor person is wronged by a wealthy one, it's bad enough if the poor person is facing off against someone who can afford to spend $1 million on their legal defense; it gets pointless if they can spend $10 million on their legal defense.

Or: An elite prep school can offer its students top-notch teachers, an outstanding library, numerous digital tools, good food, a well-maintained athletic facility, and a student-teacher ratio of 12:1. A rural high school in a poor district will have to be funded largely by local property taxes (which aren't very high), and will have high demands for things like free lunches and social services -- and forget about putting in a swimming pool or giving every kid an iPad.

Who do you think is more likely to succeed -- a poor kid from Appalachia in a class of 30, with mediocre teachers and few resources, or a wealthy kid who goes to Eton? At a minimum, they certainly aren't on a level playing field.

Who is more likely to get a good defense in a courtroom -- a poor man who has to rely on a public defender, or a wealthy man who can lavishly spend on his legal defense?

I realize we've all been subjected to decades of Social Darwinism telling us that our fates are exclusively individual in nature, and yes every now and then a kid with a lot of drive and talent succeeds on a big scale. But ultimately, inequality is largely a function of structural features of our society, and part of fixing that is taxing the wealthy -- even if they are not thrilled by that need.
 
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