• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Why Taxes Have to Be Raised on the Rich

taking the money of the wealthy for use by the government does not help the middle class.

It does if it increases employment through jobs programs, and it does if we have more progressive tax rates as we had in the 90's which helps reduce the deficit and provides more take home for the consumer class with which to buy things which creates demand which stimulates the economy.

A person that thinks a consumer economy can proper without demand is either a fool or blinded by greed.
 

that's like saying you can fly if you grew wings.

a person who thinks giving the more government money is going to help things ignores both history and current events
 
that's like saying you can fly if you grew wings.

a person who thinks giving the more government money is going to help things ignores both history and current events


Tell me how it is you think a consumer economy can prosper when most of the countries wealth is at the top, out of reach of the majority of consumers?
 
Tell me how it is you think a consumer economy can prosper when most of the countries wealth is at the top, out of reach of the majority of consumers?

tell me how you think people who become more and more dependent on government will ever find the ambition and drive to go out and make themselves more valuable and deserving of higher wages?
 
tell me how you think people who become more and more dependent on government will ever find the ambition and drive to go out and make themselves more valuable and deserving of higher wages?

Most people are aware that there are for more people than there are jobs, and it takes demand to create jobs. That's why most people see no reason to continue the tax cuts for the wealthy.

For those who have not studied Economics 101, without consumer demand, a consumer economy cannot prosper. You just can't spin your way around that.
 

most people know that this government is wasting billions of dollars a week and that you can tax the rich 100% (and assuming they don't kill you) and that will not solve the deficit.

Most people aren't smart enough to understand that your envy based desire to tax the rich more only puts a band aid on the problem and gives your welfare socialist masters more excuses to spend even more money to buy the votes of people who think like you.
 



Fortunately, most people have a better understanding of economics than you do!
 
Fortunately, most people have a better understanding of economics than you do!

Yeah right. but you aren't one of them
 
Yeah right. but you aren't one of them

I understand one of the basics in economics that you somehow missed, that consumer demand is necessary for growth in a consumer based economy.
 
I understand one of the basics in economics that you somehow missed, that consumer demand is necessary for growth in a consumer based economy.

But page 2 talks about how governments aren't the source of consumer demand.
 


Saddened by your stupid first sentence. While we do not agree much when Obama was doing better in the polls you were more civil.

That being said, have you tried to add up what the effective tax rate on higher earners would be under the proposal you laid out? My guess is not perhaps Randel and/or twtt can let us know as they liked the answer I wonder if they bothered to do the math.

To call inheritance a tax is something I would love Obama to talk about in his stump speeches. Perhaps not in Mich, but America is still an aspirational country in most places. People want to pass along their lifelong earnings to their children not the government.

I have no problem reviewing the tax code including rates. The above though is absurd.
 
But page 2 talks about how governments aren't the source of consumer demand.

From Stiglitz above, "It is no accident that the periods in which the broadest cross sections of Americans have reported higher net incomes—when inequality has been reduced, partly as a result of progressive taxation—have been the periods in which the U.S. economy has grown the fastest. It is likewise no accident that the current recession, like the Great Depression, was preceded by large increases in inequality. When too much money is concentrated at the top of society, spending by the average American is necessarily reduced—or at least it will be in the absence of some artificial prop. Moving money from the bottom to the top lowers consumption because higher-income individuals consume, as a fraction of their income, less than lower-income individuals do."
 
From Stiglitz above…like the Great Depression, was preceded by large increases in inequality…"

And did Stiglitz state what caused this reduction in inequality that preceded the Great Depression? WWII maybe? I think so…maybe we should start another one to relieve this ‘income inequality’…it worked once before.
 
And did Stiglitz state what caused this reduction in inequality that preceded the Great Depression? WWII maybe? I think so…maybe we should start another one to relieve this ‘income inequality’…it worked once before.

How could WWII be the cause of the inequality that preceded the Great Depression, since it began after the wealth inequality?
 

What I am not sure I see in the above is how lowering the wealth gap by making some poorer helps the people at the bottom richer. I guess that is why he used the word PARTLY.

The question he needs to be able to answer how to close the gap by the people at the bottom up. Not sure that closing the gap by making the top poorer is more important than the question he/you did not address.
 

The problem is most of the country's wealth is concentrated at the top by 30 years of supply side economics and financial deregulation. The solution is to to reverse those failed policies.
 
The problem is most of the country's wealth is concentrated at the top by 30 years of supply side economics and financial deregulation. The solution is to to reverse those failed policies.


there is as sound an argument that the death tax and progressive income taxes has concentrated wealth at the top then "supply side economics". maybe that is why the uber wealthy often support both tax programs
 

No, that is not what I said. Clever twisting though.
 
How could WWII be the cause of the inequality that preceded the Great Depression, since it began after the wealth inequality?

Did you miss this part of my post 'what caused this reduction'?
 
But page 2 talks about how governments aren't the source of consumer demand.

None the less, government can be used as a tool to boost demand during certain shortfalls.
 
Which doesn't disprove the point. If you really understand logical fallacies, you would know that. In effect you failed to make a response.

It dismisses it as support for your argument, and therefore i have no need to address such comments.

If you take a limited time frame, sure. I suggest a wider time frame. The minimum wage in constant inflation adjusted dollars has been declining since the late 70s.

And we wonder why other countries graduate more scientists and engineers than we do. This latest comment is simply a result of ignorance in applied mathematics. What is the relationship between nominal and real dollars as they approach a common "price" point? In other words, when adjusting for say 1980 dollars, when do nominal and real wage rates converge? Or say 1996 dollars or 2011 dollars? Pick another price point, say 1996, and see if your argument continues to hold up :lamo



Ironically, it says in that report, in several places, that unemployment rose after the minimum wage was increased.

The difference is, they did not find adequate causative evidence.

Here's the deal. If you really don't believe that the minimum wage has any negative effect, then would you support a $100 /hr minimum wage? After all, if it has zero negative effect, then why not give everyone a six-figure income?

Proof by contradiction only works when the counter arguments premise (or hypothesis) is used as a means to contradict. I never made any mention of using the minimum wage to provide wealth or increase incomes; i only rejected your notion that it increases unemployment.


See the Blue Cross & Blue Shield tax hike.

Which doesn't change my point, nor contradict it.

You never had one given you needed to fabricate your support.


No.... It refers to demand elasticities.

Funny because I was just talking to a bunch of leftists in the other threads who swore that companies were not expanding. Yet here you are claiming they are.
I wonder which of you is right.

Not expanding at a rate necessary to bring unemployment to acceptable levels.

 
Last edited:
The problem is most of the country's wealth is concentrated at the top by 30 years of supply side economics and financial deregulation. The solution is to to reverse those failed policies.

Sorry but your answer is so broad as to be non responsive. I am sure you are not calling the Clinton era supply side. As you remember Bush I called supply side Voodoo economics so those years might not count, and I am not sure you would call Obama a supply sider.

We do need real answers to this problem, but other than lashing out at others I am not sure that we have heard any real remedies.

Now if you or lpast have a real answer that would be great. Campaign slogans should not cut it here.
 
Another interesting graph:

 
None the less, government can be used as a tool to boost demand during certain shortfalls.

Snorting meth can boost energy during periods of fatigue.

Which is another way of saying the short term benefits have to outweigh the long-term costs/risks. When they don't, it becomes too tempting to go overboard with the stimulus or quick fix, until you need to apply it constantly just to avoid catastrophe.
 

That is false analogy.. The Govt. spending is not harmful. Debt can only be paid down in a healthy economy not a recessionary one so anything that increases growth will ultimately help reduce debt. The reverse will only increase debt in the long run. How's Ireland doing with paying down THEIR debt?
 
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…