I've heard this blatent crap from some on the left before, but I also heard it from Obama in one of his speaches on TV a couple days ago. Obama was talking about GWB's tax cut for EVERYONE a few years ago, and of course Obama neglected to mention it was for EVERYONE and stated it was a "tax cut for the rich". Then he want to say the tax cut was "rewarding" the rich. Someone please explain to me how it is "rewarding" the rich if you cut their taxes ? or better yet, if you don't increase their taxes ? This sounds of greed and arrogance that some people (ie liberals) think that money citizens have EARNED belongs to the government, and if the government doesn't get it, then those people are being "rewarded". It's like if you're on the street and two people approach you. One simply says "hi", and then the other says "the other guy rewarded you by not taking $10 from your wallet". Sounds fucked up doesn't it ?
Perhaps he was referring to this? And this? Here is a graphical representation of his tax formula Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You can talk about what percentage of the govt tax money comes from each income class you like. It still doesn't explain why it's "rewarding" the rich (or anyone else for that matter) by not increasing their taxes....That money is THEIRS to begin with, NOT the governments. Posting immature pictures of GWB doesn't really answer the question either....
Repealing taxes that were already there is like giving money away. No man is an island, and rich people depend on the services of the government disproportionately to poor people. Their money is also power, and thus a threat to the fair functioning of a democracy.
A tax cut for the rich isn't a reward in and of itself. But when the tax cut comes at the expense of tax cuts for the middle classes and poor, in a way that benefits the economy less than some other distribution of tax relief, then it's seen as a reward for the rich. I.e. if a rich person were to get a 3% tax cut under Bush rather than, say, a 5% cut or whatever the actual value is, the difference to them is minimal- they might have to buy a slightly smaller yacht. On the other hand, if instead you choose to cut the middle and lower class tax rates by an extra few % at the expense of rich tax payers, for them it could mean the difference between being able to and not being able to save money after paying for basic living expenses. If a family works full time and can only afford basic expenses like food and housing, it doesn't contribute to their productivity when they have nothing left with which to reward themselves after taxes. It doesn't make for a productive society or workforce, things rich people ought to be interested in.
I would have thought the opposite is true, as the rich can afford private health care, education, insurance and security?
That's after they get rich. The infrastructure, physical, legal, cultural, and scientific, necessary to provide the opportunity of great wealth from a single person's efforts, is expensive. Those who benefit greatly from it should pay for it. I mean assessing sufficient fees for their use of the economic system they have used to maintain that system, at least. Any guy who rents a backhoe knows that much. Plus a surcharge to prevent accumulations of wealth large enough to endanger the public. The government prints all the money - it's all the government's. Rich people get to use it, but not for free. Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's.
Most people get rich from hard work, not from being dependent upon the government or social infrastructure, which tends to inhibit wealth creation.
About a third of the couple of dozen most wealthy people in the US are the heirs of exactly three family fortunes. The most accurate single predictor of top executive success in the US is marrying the daughter of a top executive. People work hard the world over. They get rich that way in the US, and a few other places with systems of solid governmental and social infrastructure. Then their wealth is (or should be) heavily taxed, for two reasons: to maintain that structure, pay the bills, etc; and to prevent too large accumulations of created wealth in single piles from wrecking that system we all - including the non-rich - depend on.
But that's THEIR money to begin with. The topic of how much to tax people is really a different topic. This topic is about : how is it "rewarding" the rich by not increasing their taxes ? That's THEIR money to begin with, NOT the governments. So how is it "rewarding" them by letting them keep their own money ?
What they have left over after they've paid their bills is their money. One of the bills is for the use of the US governmentally established economic system and social infrastructure, including the money itself. And part of that bill is a self-defense assessment, to prevent too large accumulations of wealth gaining power over that system. An economic system is not a suicide pact.
So by you're "logic", if I'm at the gas pump (paying my gas bill), and the price of gas goes down, then the gas companies are "rewarding" me..... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
They got rich using the government services we all pay for, such as the interstate highway system (to get their employees to work), the public school system (to educate their workforce), the state and federal judicial system (to regulate industry and adjudicate disputes), the Customs Service (if they import goods from overseas), the Coast Guard (if they ship goods on the ocean), the FDIC (if they use banks), the FDA (if they sell drugs or food (to ensure public confidence in food and drug safety)), the ATF (if it applies), the police force (to keep their estates secure), the army (which sometimes fights to protect business interests). So, they already used these services, and it's their money? No, they owe us, and they can keep the rest. They will still be rich, and hardly notice the difference.
I think the logic is that rich people don't need all that money. True it does seem horrible to take "THEIR" money away until you notice that we are also taking money away form the poor and middle class, people who would spend that money not on another yacht or summer home in Alaska, but on food for them selfs, on a college education for their kids, on essentials, so we if we have to take money from someone (which we do) then why take it from those that need money the most and not take it from those who would barely notice the loss? The Bush tax cuts did the opposite they relieved taxes the most on the rich rather then on the poor and middle class, hence "tax cuts for the rich": the rich could have not gotten a rebate and the poor could have gotten a rebate many times larger!
Think of it this way, Alex, Bob, Cathy and Diane all go to go to stay (for free) at their friend Edward's beach house, who will not be joining them. Edward asks that they pay the electric bill for the time they are there, because air conditioning is expensive. He expects the bill will come to $200. Each of A, B, C and D, agree divide the bill 25% each and each mails Ed $50. Seven days into their vacation Ed the Owner calls them with some good news, the electric company has sent him a letter informing him of their new reduced rate and the total electric bill will only be $100. Ed then says that he'll mail everyone the excess, $40 to Alex, $25 to Bob, $25 to Cathy and $10 to Diane, because Ed secretly hates Diane. Alex gets the $40 because Alex is rich and Ed hopes to cultivate the friendship to Ed's later benefit. Had it been a pro rata distribution, of course, everyone would have gotten $25, but Ed is under no agreement or legal obligation to hand the money out in the proportion it was paid to him, so he thinks that's fair based on who he prefers get the money. Alex likewise thinks this arrangement is fair and equitable. In Ed's view this money is akin to "rent" and he's free to charge Alex a lower rent (or a higher rebate on that rent) since it's Ed's beach house in the first place. Would anyone deny, though, that Alex has received a "preference" of some sort, and is it such a stretch to refer to such a preference as a "reward"? (Remembering that reward can be defined as a "return for performance of a desired behavior or condition" I think there's plenty of room for this). Now imagine that Edward called the four up before they had sent him the money, told them of the reduced rate and asked Alex to sent $10, Bob $25, Cathy $25 and Diane $40. Economically that woks out the same, but Alex still seems to be getting a preferential rate. In the governmental context, much like the renters, everyone has some obligation, at first blush, to pay for the services of government consumed. It's fair for Ed to ask for that. We, the People, have agreed on how to allocate the amounts owed, based in part on relative income levels. When the government tries to give back the money previously paid into the system or to reduce our rates, humans have a tendency to want the outcome to be pro rata based on contributions. That is somewhat arbitrary though, as $1 does not have the same utility value to everyone, so you can imagine basing the payment on the actual economic (as opposed to monetary) "loss" of each person. (In that latter case, though you'd expect the rich to get less of a tax reduction, in terms of absolute amounts since the marginal value of a dollar is so much lower to them.
don't the rich give to a lot of charitable foundations? Don't the rich own lots of businesses that supply jobs? I guess I'm not jealous of the rich. I wish I was rich.
Supply jobs? Providing a job means you are profiting from someone else's labor. It's exploitive, not a great service to the nation.
Creating a job means you get more out of the relationship than you put in. The only reason there are jobs is that rich people have unequal access to capital.
