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US income inequality at record high

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#561
Unrepresented said:
Skills being education, talent, training, insight, experience, etc.

There are costs to access those whether it be tuition, dues, internships, etc. The government gives a limited amount for free (decreasingly so as budgets get continually cut) and the rest is a mixture of for profit and not-for-profit.

Assets are those things that one acquires with the net you've invested your "skills" in. You can have deeds, corporations, consumer goods, diplomas, titles, copyrights etc.

Those are not divided equally among the population at any given time, since there are continually new entrants (16, 18, 21 year olds) coming into an already established society. And that's the best case scenario assuming that all of those 16, 18, 21 year olds had equal schools, tutors, parenting, safety, income, nutrition, etc.
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I think that people are not all equal. That's been tried in past with poor results.

Allow people to be unique and live the lives they carve out for themselves!
 
#562
Lonesomedave said:
hmmmm....welllll......on another thread we have pretty much decided that the universe was NOT created but simply came into existence @ 20 billion years ago (or so)

and life on earth is pretty much the result of chemical reactions that have changed over the years....progressing from blue green algae** to more complex forms and so on, up to the present time

and the food chain is neither good nor bad, it just IS.....

am i wrong here...have i said anything you disagree with?....

so, in the absence of a creator.....who possibly COULD have called on you or anyone to create a MORE moral food chain?....(and, of course, that is an oxymoron, because the food chain is, likewise, neither moral nor immoral.....it just IS)....

i mean, how can you have a "more moral" food chain, when there is no morality at all IN the food chain?....it's like Alice said to the Mad Hatter - "How can i have more tea when i haven't had any yet?"....when one blue green algum absorbed another one, was it behaving in an immoral fashion?

so, i get back to my post several places ago...crying about morality where none exists nor ever existed, nor ever can exist is like crying about the law of gravity as you fall off a building

davesignatureII-1.png


ps-edit ** or maybe stromatolites
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My self-righteous diatribes travel faster than the speed of consistent logic.:ninja:
 
#566
aborgman said:
The highest tax rate WAS 91%.

Problem is - being in the 91% tax bracket DOESN'T mean that you pay 91% of your income. It means you pay 91% of your income that falls into that bracket.

Both the millionaire and the person barely above the poverty line pay the same 10% on their first $8,900 of income.
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Actually much of the "poor" person income such as food stamps section 8, General assistance isn't taxed at all.

Thanks for the chance to clear that up.
 
#567
aborgman said:
In some cases, yes - They were lied to by the mortgage originator as to the nature of the loan.

In other cases the individuals COULD afford the house, but the banks just screwed up (and this is thousands of cases) and seized their homes ANYWAY.
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But the terms were there in black and white on the contract. At lest they were on mine. How could they let that happen to themselves?
 
#570
two fingers said:
The government creates the situations you are referring to. Costly regulation and taxes are the primary reasons for jobs moving overseas, not wages. So, no corporation has threatened "We will move overseas unless you take lower pay".
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"Costly regulations" is largely equal to - "we expect you to pay the societal costs for the pollution you create" instead of (as was done up until about the 1970s) "let the taxpayers eat it".

Even given our current "costly regulation" - most Superfund sight cleanup is about 80% taxpayer funded as opposed to being paid for by those who created the mess.
 
#571
silvertripper said:
Before you (the OP) gets mad at the richest 1%... look at the amount of tax you actually pay per gallon of gas. In Texas my state tax plus excise tax per gallon of unleaded is 38.4 cents. You should get mad at he government before the top 1% earners. Gas effects all of us.

Fuel tax revenue to the US in 2009 was $38 billion.

Pick your battles OP.

Speaking of Gas... I need to visit the for sale section of TB!!
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I dislike having our highways built and maintained as well.:mad:

:ninja:
 
#572
BawanaRik said:
I think that people are not all equal. That's been tried in past with poor results.

Allow people to be unique and live the lives they carve out for themselves!
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So long as we're providing equal opportunity then it's more reasonable to allow for people to spread out along the social spectrum as they see fit. Unfortunately we are not providing anywhere near equal opportunity.
 
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