(November 11, 2014 at 8:05 pm)Heywood Wrote:(November 11, 2014 at 7:44 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: This system is a sickness. We shouldn't be thanking the Walton's for the crumbs from their table. We shouldn't be allowing the obscenity of them having enough money to end world poverty. We should be limiting their earning potential to human levels. Ending their control of the media and politicians to further fatten their wallets. This is just obscene. What we're witnessing with some of the super rich gesturing at giving back the tiniest fraction of their wealth is them getting very worried that 7 billion people might want their fair share back.
One advantage of a consumption tax is that contributions made to political campaigns by wealthier individuals would be taxed at a much higher rate than contributions made by poor people. If a person is so poor that they don't pay the consumption tax, a $100 dollar contribution they make to a campaign would only cost them $100. For a rich person subject to a 100% consumption tax it is a little different. That $100 contribution the rich person makes to a candidate actually cost him $200. A consumption tax equalizes consumption....including consumption of speech.
And to your point, you really shouldn't care that a rich person has more 0s in his ledger than you.....it isn't important. A millionaire living in a trailer park shouldn't be punished for being a millionaire. But if that millionaire drives a car, while you ride a bike, if that millionaire gets his teeth fixed while you writhe in pain, if that millionaire eats until he vomits while you starve.....then you should care....then that millionaire is doing an injustice to you. Inequality in consumption is the real problem...not inequality in dollars or income.
Now I am not sold yet on a consumption tax instead of an income tax. However I am convinced that it actually considers the real problem and not some side artifact.
It isn't about one person having more than me. It is the average climate collectively. Just like climate change deniers who are going to look at this current polar vortex bringing in cold weather and snow and stupidly think "its cold and snowing so climate change isn't happening".
It is an average, of temperatures worldwide and the part that they forget is that the cold is more extreme while on the lower hemisphere the heat is more extreme. And you combine that with temperatures taken in 100,000s of locations from every day for decades and decades you add them up and average them out.
Same with the economy. We know ratio wise that the bottom is NOT keeping up with the top even if you want to claim it is going up. It is an extreme because of the gap.
I am tired of anyone arguing they know what is best for everyone else. There is more than one class in this country and you do not get to decide for the rest of us alone how business is conducted.
