14 Ways A 90 Percent Top Tax Rate Fixes Our Economy And Our Country

[fotd]

There's still enough incentive in the tax code to reward those who donate to charity or create jobs without resorting to putting the 90% tax rate in their back like an SKS rifle.  If the current tax code rewards passive investment, what's the problem with that?  Isn't finding available capital one of the major problems facing business and individiduals these days?

Well, sure doesn't looks like the past 30 years have really done wonders compared to the previous 30 years. You seem clueless. The %90 tax rate won't affect you. What's with the gun in the back reference? Rewarding passive income has little impact on incentives to take risk when there is no offset for taking that risk. And we are talking about active income for the most part. Do you fend for the super rich often?

[guido911]

We did innovate, invent, expand, employ, and compete during those times because the family element ruled and the tax code was designed with incentives. Today, greed rules as the tax code repels risk taking based on reducing taxable income for the individual.
Why live here? I agree....you should move to someplace where freeloading is easier for conservatives. Make more room for the worker bees from outside our borders.

You avoid answering my questions but are quick with the name calling, Guidope.

Freeloading? WTH are you talking about. I have done far more than you to make this country more safe and prosperous than you could ever hope. I busted my @ss to get through college and grad school and to build a practice while many in the bottom-feeding class just did as little as they could to get by.  As for me leaving to make room for the worker bees, I would like to know how many people you employ and that you are responsible for paying so they can find a job?

[fotd]

Freeloading? WTH are you talking about. I have done far more than you to make this country more safe and prosperous than you ever had. I busted my @ss to get through college and grad school and to build a practice while many in the bottom-feeding class just did as little as they could to get by.  As for me leaving to make room for the worker bees, I would like to know how many people you employ and that you are responsible for paying so they can find a job?

You used this quote: "Conservatives dream of new machines, liberals lust for lotteries". So, my comment on freeloading was directed at that theory. Who put the conservative in the dreamers seat? Conservatives make it on the backs of the oppressed. Frankly, I don't care to know about you personally. Let's not get into jobs because during the 30's and through the 70's my network employed more than any group in the state for several years. And then came a change in the tax code that made it better to be a passive investor.

[Conan71]

And then came a change in the tax code that made it better to be a passive investor.

Isn't that what greedy conservatives are doing?  Sitting in front of their computer and day-trading instead of creating jobs? 

[dbacks fan]

Isn't that what greedy conservatives are doing?  Sitting in front of their computer and day-trading instead of creating jobs? 

Unless you work for the SEC and the you are surfing porn.

[Gaspar]

fotd,

If I gave you 1 million dollars, what would you do with it?

[fotd]

fotd,

If I gave you 1 million dollars, what would you do with it?

Nobody would know.

[fotd]

Isn't that what greedy conservatives are doing? 

Sitting around hating our government and talking about tax burdens.

[Gaspar]

Sitting around hating our government and talking about tax burdens.

I don't think you understand.

Government must be regulated by the people, not the other way around.  That is the only thing that makes government successful.

Government is tolerated.  Elected officials are tolerated.  We do not hate them, we tolerate them until we have the opportunity to change them.   

The most dangerous people in the world are those who love government.  These people love force, and the opportunity that government gives them to impose their will on others. 

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. – Thomas Jefferson (1743-1846), U.S. President, Letter to Abigail Adams, 22 February 1787

Man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. – Ronald Reagan

[nathanm]

There is some merit to the argument that the tax code has, of late, been detrimental to the middle class, albeit indirectly. There is also merit to the argument that shrinking the middle class by expanding the ranks of the poor leads to more crime.

Blaming it on Reagan is not really supportable, though. The middle class was being murdered before we made it to Reagan.

Gaspar, you might want to rethink using Jefferson quotes, unless you also advocate returning to an agrarian society with tariffs we would consider punitive today and no central bank. Since that's what Jefferson wanted for our (young) country, his writings only make sense in that frame of mind.

Also, do you have any context for that Clinton quote? It sounds like a particularly heinous pull quote that loses any real meaning out of context.

[Gaspar]

There is some merit to the argument that the tax code has, of late, been detrimental to the middle class, albeit indirectly. There is also merit to the argument that shrinking the middle class by expanding the ranks of the poor leads to more crime.

Blaming it on Reagan is not really supportable, though. The middle class was being murdered before we made it to Reagan.

Gaspar, you might want to rethink using Jefferson quotes, unless you also advocate returning to an agrarian society with tariffs we would consider punitive today and no central bank. Since that's what Jefferson wanted for our (young) country, his writings only make sense in that frame of mind.

Also, do you have any context for that Clinton quote? It sounds like a particularly heinous pull quote that loses any real meaning out of context.

I have no need to rethink quoting Jefferson.  I understand that the founding fathers are not popular among liberals, but the philosophy is as applicable now as it would be a thousand years ago or a thousand years into the future.

As for the Clinton quote, I've seen it attributed to one speech and two interviews, but you're right I can't find an actual transcript of either.  It's been bounced around the media and internet for 17 years now.  Supposedly it was made durring an MTV interview on August 12, 1993, but I can't find any evidence of it so I will scrub it.

[rwarn17588]

I have no need to rethink quoting Jefferson.  I understand that the founding fathers are not popular among liberals, but the philosophy is as applicable now as it would be a thousand years ago or a thousand years into the future.

Really?

I adore Jefferson, but his -- and the other founding fathers' -- ideas often were constantly evolving.

I don't think you can pin him down on many things. I think his flexibility -- and not his rigidity -- was a strength, not a weakness.

I'd say a foe of big government would have been raising Cain over the Louisiana Purchase, for instance. That, more than anything, expanded the United States and the role of government as much as anything. It turned the U.S. from a colony into an empire.

[custosnox]

Really?

I adore Jefferson, but his -- and the other founding fathers' -- ideas often were constantly evolving.

I don't think you can pin him down on many things. I think his flexibility -- and not his rigidity -- was a strength, not a weakness.

I'd say a foe of big government would have been raising Cain over the Louisiana Purchase, for instance. That, more than anything, expanded the United States and the role of government as much as anything. It turned the U.S. from a colony into an empire.

There are a few things you can pin Jefferson down on, and one that is pretty liberal, which is seperation of church and state.  The more I learn about Jefferson the more I like him, though I may not agree with everything of his.

The Louisiana purchase was kinda happenstance and was originally intended to be closer to the size of current Louisiana, maybe a bit smaller.  Jefferson really didn't know what all Napoleon was including when he made his decision to sell it all, and also felt greif stricken (according to the historians) after making the deal because he felt that the deal was unconstitutional.

[rwarn17588]

The Louisiana purchase was kinda happenstance and was originally intended to be closer to the size of current Louisiana, maybe a bit smaller.  Jefferson really didn't know what all Napoleon was including when he made his decision to sell it all, and also felt greif stricken (according to the historians) after making the deal because he felt that the deal was unconstitutional.

He must've gotten over it quick, given his enthusiasm for the Lewis & Clark expedition.

If Jefferson were truly that reluctant to have the U.S. expanded, he wouldn't have bothered with that long trip.

[nathanm]

I have no need to rethink quoting Jefferson.  I understand that the founding fathers are not popular among liberals, but the philosophy is as applicable now as it would be a thousand years ago or a thousand years into the future.

Well, in my case you understand wrongly. I like Jefferson. I'd be delighted if we were still the bucolic agrarian nation Jefferson so loved and desired to perpetuate. Sadly, we are not that nation and have not been in a very long time.

In any event, Jefferson was not the be all and end all of early US political thinking. In fact, he was mostly alone in his desire to see us remain an agrarian nation. The majority were more like Adams and Hamilton, who believed in a strong central government and were generally for cities and industrialization.

It is interesting how you feel the need to claim the founding fathers as your own, as if they are not the proud legacy of all of us. Rigid thinking like that is what leads to the fractured political climate we have in this country today. You attempt to demonize 'liberals' with a completely unsubstantiated straw man. That sort of discourse brings us all down.