No Avail
| BTW #19: The Cold Rationality Of Depressive States Of Mind @No_Avail | Uploaded December 2009 | Updated October 2024, 5 minutes ago.
Introspection over.
🔇 TAP TO UNMUTE
BTW #19: The Cold Rationality Of Depressive States Of Mind @No_Avail
![More On Taxes & Individual Liberties [Mainly Applicable To U.S.]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/K98l_gnYeKA/hqdefault.jpg "More On Taxes & Individual Liberties [Mainly Applicable To U.S.]
To reiterate, I dont oppose the Income Tax in principle. I am *currently* against the Income Tax on account of the shady business surrounding the enumeration which led to its implementation. Most of us know by now that an honest state by state consensus was not obtained (or at least given due consideration) but few are willing to openly discuss it. The fact that my proposal of a simple do over is being met with scathing contempt, is nothing more than intellectual bankruptcy on the part of those accusing me of alternative motives.
Theoretically, all income should be taxed and taxed progressively, regardless of the potential downside effects on big business or anything else the actual plutocrat apologists/admirers like to throw out there.
Just apply the principle of insurance: People who have a bigger house or a fancier car, have to pay more to insure it. Social security payments make up about 20% of the budget in the US and are dependent on income, so if you paid more into the system, you get higher payments when you retire. The same should apply to all govt services, which includes that pesky thing I like to call infrastructure.
An obvious example would be defense. Its no secret that the DOD benefits the rich immensely more given the vast amounts of property owned primarily by wealthy people. Even more importantly, they own highly more *valuable* property, which is constantly sought after, thus reeking more benefits from the DOD. This actually applies more to domestic threats rather than foreign, whose collective radar is always on valuable assets, as opposed to the slumps occupied by poor people, or small apartments inhabited overwhelmingly by the middle class.
There theres education/transportation/Court system/Energy: All more useful the more one owns. The interstates & airports primarily benefit interstate commerce along with people who travel often, not ghetto folk or your average middle class earner, especially considering how little the average U.S. worker makes when adjusted for the increasingly higher costs of living. They have next to nothing left for spending once paying for food/bills, which Id also tax progressively mind you, at least until the abuses of the last 3 decades are paid off.
I doubt that anyone would deny that energy is used disproportionately by the rich & by industry, so moving right along...
Education: While the rich for the most part just ship their spawn off to private schools, the better public schools are ones attended by kids of the moderately well off. Combine this with the fact that companies owned by the rich still benefit from the education that moderately well off students receive in these public schools, and itll make perfect sense.
Bailouts: Savings and loans crisis bailouts, bank bailouts in 2008 (was up to 9 billion last time I checked), auto industry bailouts, and others I cant recall at the moment. I do recall that the failing S&L was bought for around $350 million, and then the buyer received $2 billion from the government to help resurrect it.
Normally Id put a 50% cap on progressive taxation, but not in this economic climate. As long as multinational corporations are permitted to spend untold amounts funding the campaigns of hand picked presidential candidates, with no IRV in effect to counter balance the harm of spoiler effects (which coerces practical voters into voting for the lesser of 2 corporate evils, as opposed to voting for their ideal candidate) then taxing over 50% is perfectly justified. The argument that is isnt, on account of the fact that a minority of that top 1% refrains from abusing their wealth & actually keeps their distance from infiltrating politics, is the same as saying we shouldnt have a justice system because we know, as a practical fact, that the implication of every justice system will always be a percentage of innocent people being declared guilty of crimes they didnt commit, with many of the wrong decisions never being overturned due to lack of available data required to reveal truth. Despite this unfortunate inevitability, we still recognize the necessity of the existence of justice systems and file their shortcomings under the lesser-of-two-evils pile. The same should apply to the few rich people out there who dont abuse their power but would still have to get taxed higher.")
