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Is Their A War Against The Poor?

TimmyBoy

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I have read several statements and arguments that a welfare state exists in the US, but not in the manner in which people believe. In David Cay Johnston's book "Perfectly Legal" he makes an argument that a welfare state exists for the top 1% of the rich, which he calls the "super rich class" where they pay just about no taxes at all. He claims, that this is one of many reasons why their is a growing gap between rich and poor in this country. So, here is a question I have, is their a war being waged on the poor of this country? Or is this left wing rhetoric?
 
He also claims in his book that social security taxes subsidized the rich and also makes the claim that the IRS Tax Code by design preys on the working poor.
 
TimmyBoy said:
I have read several statements and arguments that a welfare state exists in the US, but not in the manner in which people believe. In David Cay Johnston's book "Perfectly Legal" he makes an argument that a welfare state exists for the top 1% of the rich, which he calls the "super rich class" where they pay just about no taxes at all. He claims, that this is one of many reasons why their is a growing gap between rich and poor in this country. So, here is a question I have, is their a war being waged on the poor of this country? Or is this left wing rhetoric?


1) the top 1% pay more than a third of the federal income tax and most of the death confiscation tax. They also buy alot of stuff so they pay alot of sales tax

2) some in the ultra rich like high taxes for two reasons

a) it prevents hardworking high salaried individuals from competeing with them since a high marginal top rate prevents a person making most of his money off of salary creating the wealth leveraging taht they might achieve if the tax was on consumption-furthermore it keeps lots of people in a morass of welfare induced addiction which is the real war against poor in this nation

b) noveau riche ultra rich love the estate tax. An estate tax forces old money to sell desireable land or long held artwork to pay the tax. If the best property and the most valuable artworks etc are held from generation to generation, the ultra riche can't buy into old money society :mrgreen:
 
TurtleDude said:
1) the top 1% pay more than a third of the federal income tax and most of the death confiscation tax. They also buy alot of stuff so they pay alot of sales tax

2) some in the ultra rich like high taxes for two reasons

a) it prevents hardworking high salaried individuals from competeing with them since a high marginal top rate prevents a person making most of his money off of salary creating the wealth leveraging taht they might achieve if the tax was on consumption-furthermore it keeps lots of people in a morass of welfare induced addiction which is the real war against poor in this nation

b) noveau riche ultra rich love the estate tax. An estate tax forces old money to sell desireable land or long held artwork to pay the tax. If the best property and the most valuable artworks etc are held from generation to generation, the ultra riche can't buy into old money society :mrgreen:

So this guy is full of **** basically? I mean, I am taking his claims with a grain of salt. I am not part off the top 1% of the rich in this country, so I wouldn't know.
 
TimmyBoy said:
So this guy is full of **** basically? I mean, I am taking his claims with a grain of salt. I am not part off the top 1% of the rich in this country, so I wouldn't know.


lots of people hear top 1% and they think of gates or Buffet or good old Ted and in reality in encompasses people making under a million a year. That's alot of money but in some states you really aren't living the lifestyle of the rich and famous. No 30 room mansions, no private yacht with a crew, no LearJet etc

There is no doubt that some of the ultra rich have a plan to keep the poor poor. Those tend to be rich democratic party operatives because a large underclass dependent on the government is necessary to them to win elections
 
TimmyBoy said:
So this guy is full of **** basically? I mean, I am taking his claims with a grain of salt. I am not part off the top 1% of the rich in this country, so I wouldn't know.


Yeah he's full of crap. Theres even an additional tax. The war is on the middle class not on the poor. The problem with American politics is that it panders to the upper class while pampering the poor which results in the middle class being stomped under a political boot.
 
Napoleon's Nightingale said:
Yeah he's full of crap. Theres even an additional tax. The war is on the middle class not on the poor. The problem with American politics is that it panders to the upper class while pampering the poor which results in the middle class being stomped under a political boot.


interesting point-where do you draw the lines between rich and middle class. THe dems call two NYC police Sergeants who are married as "rich"
 
galenrox said:
yeah, but outside of old money and the ultra rich, who gives a crap?
My mom's side of the family is old money. And when my greatgrandma died, they had to sell her house cause of the estate tax
And you know what, I don't care. No one in this family cares. There is no way in hell that we could possibly need that much, and we all believe that my generation, if we aquire wealth, will be as much from our personal talent and work, we don't want everything handed to us.

that is your choice-but its a choice you should have. envy is what pushes the support for the death confiscation tax (property taxes are actually estate taxes)
 
galenrox said:
Let's think about this though, which police systems get better funding? Which school systems get better funding? Where do they have better roads, and better maintained towns? Who gets the best of public programs?
The really really rich.
We are a society, we are not islands near each other.

I have benefited from coming from a family of wealth quite a bit. I went to public schools and they were all fantastic. I'm not gonna have any student loans when I graduate, and I don't starve. And chances are I will be fairly wealthy in my later years, and if my kids have it as good as I did, then I am 100% indifferent if I have to pay higher taxes.

we're in this together.

And the rich can afford to pay more in taxes than the poor without noticably effecting their quality of life, cause someone's quality of life living of 5 million a year isn't that different than someone living on 3 million a year, at least not to people outside of the old money society.

And I agree, in an ideal society higher taxes wouldn't be neccisary. In an ideal society people would actually give a damn about how their fellow man lives, and in an ideal world the rich would have their priorities in order and realize that money spent on job training for the homeless is better spent than money spent on saving some obscure animal that no one gives a damn about.

But we don't live in an ideal society. Some rich people don't acknowledge how much they benefit from coming from wealth and honestly think most poor people are poor cause they're lazy, and think that being lazy is worthy of sentancing someone to a life of starvation, unless, of course, if that lazy person grew up in a family with money.

I'm not calling for socialism or financial equality. If someone is not allowed the reward of making the life of his kids better than his own, then the motivation to work hard is erased. What I am advocating is the government stepping in until the rich realize the err of their calous ways.

I think its rather myopic to claim the rich are all full of error and the government is somehow wiser. some poor people blame all their ills on the rich-so maybe the government should punish them too for their stupidity

the only proper reason for taxes is to efficiently and FAIRLY raise revenues. Using taxes for social engineering is a major ill in this country and the estate tax was premised on an unconstitutional social engineering scheme

If you all want an estate tax-tax every estate a flat fee so those who clamor for it have to pay it too.

any time there is a tax increase it should be the bottom rate-not the top so everyone has to pay equally. I tire of an attempt by the left to get a system where a majority don't pay FIT and they can vote for more and more taxes on those who do
 
TimmyBoy said:
He also claims in his book that social security taxes subsidized the rich and also makes the claim that the IRS Tax Code by design preys on the working poor.

Hell yes!

Through the IRS and the Federal Reserve Bank; the working class is designed to subsidise the top of the "pyramid"

By using the indigent, they sell the population on Socialism and forward a myriad Social Programs which require loans at interest.

Or worse, unending wars which as well require massive loans with massive price tags.

All collected through an armed Federal Tax Collection Service.

The World Bank operates on this exact same pattern.

The nations natural or governmental resources are used as collateral.
 
Napoleon's Nightingale said:
Yeah he's full of crap. Theres even an additional tax. The war is on the middle class not on the poor. The problem with American politics is that it panders to the upper class while pampering the poor which results in the middle class being stomped under a political boot.

What middle class? Do we even have one anymore?:2razz:
 
If you base it on who can shoulder it better than you set the stage for advocating a tax scheme where no one can make more than a certain amount of income. If you want to make the rich pay more they should have more votes in the how tax policies are implemented-just like a corporation. The more stock someone owns means the more he has at risk if the corporation fails. If you expect some to carry far more of the weight than others, those have to be compensated by the entity that taxes them more

You also make the mistake so many liberals and some others make in thinking that society and government are exactly the same thing. If I don't support GOVERNMENT redistribution of income or wealth, you assume that means I oppose helping the poor. My brother was a professional fund raiser for a major charitable trust for several years-he now chairs a private trust that has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the needy and public interest entities. He can tell you that the most conservative anti tax people were usually the ones who gave the most money. Did you see the almost non-existent amount of charitable contributions made by Kerry and Gore?

Rich people are not rich because of the government in most cases-often its more of a case of being rich despite it. They are rich because they have a value to the marketplace. That people have become rich does not necessarily mean they somehow owe more to government since they have already "given" to the market -society-.
 
Lucidthots said:
Hell yes!

Through the IRS and the Federal Reserve Bank; the working class is designed to subsidise the top of the "pyramid"

By using the indigent, they sell the population on Socialism and forward a myriad Social Programs which require loans at interest.

Or worse, unending wars which as well require massive loans with massive price tags.

All collected through an armed Federal Tax Collection Service.

The World Bank operates on this exact same pattern.

The nations natural or governmental resources are used as collateral.

I do alot of investing in the stock market and I guarantee you, if the stock market were to ever collapse, the best buy would be gold or selling short on the margin. At one time our money used to be backed by gold. I personally believe it should be fully backed by gold and it prevents inflation. Many others would argue that it is ok to not have your money backed by gold, but it seems to make more sense to have money backed by gold like we did in the past. Their are some right wing extremists who claim the federal reserve is a fraud and talk of a world socialist conspiracy but I am not going to be suckered by such views. But it seems to make sense to have money backed by gold.
 
TimmyBoy said:
I do alot of investing in the stock market and I guarantee you, if the stock market were to ever collapse, the best buy would be gold or selling short on the margin. At one time our money used to be backed by gold. I personally believe it should be fully backed by gold and it prevents inflation. Many others would argue that it is ok to not have your money backed by gold, but it seems to make more sense to have money backed by gold like we did in the past. Their are some right wing extremists who claim the federal reserve is a fraud and talk of a world socialist conspiracy but I am not going to be suckered by such views. But it seems to make sense to have money backed by gold.

Ouch lol. Unfortunatley we've printed too much paper money than we have bullion to represent..in fact the bullion we have could only back up 1% of our paper money. The problem with bullion, especially gold, is that the value is unstable and often exceeds that of the paper money...which is why we stopped using it to back our currency. Of course, if the market is about to fall down around our ears then it might be a good buy if you have enough cash but you'd still lose money. If the market crashes then the value of the dollar would make a crater in the floor while the value of gold would skyrocket. Exchanging dollars for gold mid-post crash would be insane because you would lose a tremendous amount of money and thats assuming that the dollar would still be worth something. Investing in it now might not be such a bad idea.
 
Napoleon's Nightingale said:
Ouch lol. Unfortunatley we've printed too much paper money than we have bullion to represent..in fact the bullion we have could only back up 1% of our paper money. The problem with bullion, especially gold, is that the value is unstable and often exceeds that of the paper money...which is why we stopped using it to back our currency. Of course, if the market is about to fall down around our ears then it might be a good buy if you have enough cash but you'd still lose money. If the market crashes then the value of the dollar would make a crater in the floor while the value of gold would skyrocket. Exchanging dollars for gold mid-post crash would be insane because you would lose a tremendous amount of money and thats assuming that the dollar would still be worth something. Investing in it now might not be such a bad idea.

Yeah, that is what I am talking about. If the market were to crash or the economy were to completely and totally collapse and you had gold, you would be set.
 
TimmyBoy said:
Yeah, that is what I am talking about. If the market were to crash or the economy were to completely and totally collapse and you had gold, you would be set.


The problem is that no one owns the acctual gold but the Federal Reserve. It's illegal to own gold bars. You can invest dollars in gold but if you cashed the investment what exactly would they pay you in post-crash? The dollar would be worth next to 0, there wouldn't be anything for the Federal Reserve to pay you with, and theres not enough gold to go around to the investors. If the dollar is worthless then, obviously, gold would be worth FAR more so how would the Federal Reserve give you a profit considering the fact that the money you invested is worth 0?
 
Napoleon's Nightingale said:
The problem is that no one owns the acctual gold but the Federal Reserve. It's illegal to own gold bars. You can invest dollars in gold but if you cashed the investment what exactly would they pay you in post-crash? The dollar would be worth next to 0, there wouldn't be anything for the Federal Reserve to pay you with, and theres not enough gold to go around to the investors. If the dollar is worthless then, obviously, gold would be worth FAR more so how would the Federal Reserve give you a profit considering the fact that the money you invested is worth 0?

Find a way to own gold and keep it in your personal possession without anybody knowing about it. It would be a sure way to protect yourself when the economy collapses heh heh heh.
 
TimmyBoy said:
Find a way to own gold and keep it in your personal possession without anybody knowing about it. It would be a sure way to protect yourself when the economy collapses heh heh heh.


:lol: Fort Knox here we come.
 
TimmyBoy said:
Their are some right wing extremists who claim the federal reserve is a fraud and talk of a world socialist conspiracy but I am not going to be suckered by such views.

I am a "right-wing" extreeeeemist....who believes that the Federal Reserve is a fraud. (Me and Andrew Jackson...oh and Lincoln too....and Wilson....well a buch of people)

(I guess the truth, is an "extremist" position.)

Here is a documentary called "The Money Masters" which explains how the International Bankers: control the Federal Reserve Bank and more.

As someone who invests in the markets, this information will be very usefull to you I am sure.

Download

Part 2 70 MB
Part 1 89 MB

Download Part 1 first to watch from the begining.

http://www.archive.org/details/MoneyMasters


Enjoy!
 
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