WeHAVE No Money,, we have currency,

There have been two well intentioned tax changes of major significance
The inheritance tax trigger point was moved way up "to protect our struggling farmers" who were "land rich but money poor"; and secondly, in the land of innovation and make it on your own pull yourself up by your bootstraps, earned income (reported on W-2 and 1099 etc) is taxed at higher rates than capital gains ( you risked your money but didn't work at whatever the company did to earn money).  The surprising uptake is that all the wealthy pass on a much greater percent of their wealth to their offspring with reduced taxes AND, those that have the money to risk  (that is don't spend all their money on clothes, food, shelter and transportation but have some or lots left over to invest) pay a lower percent on their gains after taking out the losses (you know, like workers take out their commuting and uniform expenses)ho ho ho.

That's also the great internal redistribution of wealth (yeah, why are the republicans complaining??) and the second redistribution of wealth  is from Europe and the US to the middle east oil countries which helps fund all those happy jihadist. It dwarfs the redistribution of wealth to Asia as Asia becomes a manufacturing/tech center.  That will, however, become the third great redistribution of wealth. It is a wonderful world.

I read this today and remembered this thread......


Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%
 
Harry Binswanger
     

It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value–as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.

Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person–a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.

It was from love–not charity–that your mother fed you, bought clothes for you, paid for your education, gave you presents on your birthday. It was for value received that your teachers worked day in and day out to instruct you. In commercial transactions, customers buy a product not to provide alms to the business, but because they want the product or service–want it for their own personal benefit and enjoyment. And most of the time they get it, which is why they choose to continue patronizing the same businesses.

All proper human interactions are win-win; that’s why the parties decide to engage in them. It’s not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. It’s the Al Capones and Bernie Madoffs. Voluntary trade, without force or fraud, is the exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. In trade, both parties gain.

Each particular individual in the community who contributed to a man’s rise to wealth was paid at the time–either materially or, as in the case of parents and friends, spiritually. There is no debt to discharge. There is nothing to give back, because there was nothing taken away.

Well, maybe there is–in the other direction. The shoe is on the other foot. It is “the community” that should give back to the wealth-creators. It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa. Ayn Rand developed the idea of “the pyramid of ability,” which John Galt sets forth in Atlas Shrugged:

“When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making . . .

In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have darned the strong.

For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in their debt.

Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere.

There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code that darns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange.

An end must be put to the inhuman practice of draining the productive to subsidize the unproductive. An end must be put to the primordial notion that one’s life belongs to the tribe, to “the community,” and that the superlative wealth-creators must do penance for the sin of creating value.

And Ayn Rand is just the lady who can do it.

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 09/18/13 at 06:44:33:



Agreed... the idea that its not a sin to be wealthy .. I agree with!. But the example of Sachs as an innocent and fair trader??? silly.

Well,, Webster,, seems like youre in the minority in your appreciation for Goldman Sux.

A little clarification is in order:
I'm not some huge Ann Ryn fan. I do think her ideas have some merit. I just thought the article fit this thread. Took me 10 years to read that darn Atlas book! Started it several times but my God that woman takes 20 sentences to make a single point.....

I'm not a "fan" of Goldman, I just doubt they are some evil monster you make them out to be. I don't think "rich" cheat any more or less often than the average person does. Obviously their pocketbook is about a million (billion times) bigger than mine.

I just saw some article the silly Obama phone giveaway is loaded with fraud. Other than scale, what makes some dude ripping off Uncle Sam to get a free cell any different than some Goldman execut ripping off UncleSam?

I am fortunately not"blessed" with the class warfare gene that seems to run rampant on here.

Web things happen beyond your control and you could be wiped out overnight. You could blame it on the government if the Chinese copy your product and export it over here at a cheaper price. Its not your fault. I don't know if anyone works for you but it would do away their jobs also and its the goverments fault. We cant be chained to a post and put to work when we're 8 years old and there's no way we can compete because our patents are no good over there. We should never have started trading with the Chinese.They mistreat workers, women and children and its wrong. Ifwere're supposed to be the worlds keeper why are we importing their products when they're being made under terrible inhuman conditions..We are the largest wheat and corn producer in the world. Why cant we raise the price of our food we export to the middle east when they raise the price of oil. That's only fair and good business. Or better yet start minding our own dam business and screw the rest of the world. I wish you and everyone on this forum good health but I'll quit if it offends you. It's 5 in the morning and I'm hurting so bad I cant sleep. Havent been to bed and I hope something like that never happens to you but like I said before if you're offended I'll stop. Have a good day and God bless you some more.