This is why Republicans still do well at the ballot box. Even the coastal liberal elite won't admit they're rich; meanwhile the poor don't want to seem like "haters" and anyway aspire to be rich... er, solidly upper-middle class, too.
This reminds me of the Bloomberg story from last March about a survey of actual U.S. millionaires by Fidelity Investments. Respondents said they'd need $7.5 million in assets to feel rich. Meanwhile, the average annual gross income in the U.S. is $25,000!
This comment on the original post puts it in perspective: (BOOKLES): "If people with 300k feel poor I may as well get a cup and brush off my guitar and hit the trains. Because begging is my only logical next step. I won't even go into the higher amounts."
You literally have to have a private jet and be able to influence elections to be considered "rich" in America today... And even then if you just act normal you get to enjoy suck-ups breathlessly telling everybody "what a normal guy/gal" you are, like you're doubly blessed by fate for not being an asshole too.
It's like everybody wants to take off their uniforms and pretend to play for the other team. (Sigh) Good ole' class consciousness / class interests / class warfare is much more honest and believable.
And yes, I am judging. There's a whole lot of judging coming from my side.
With a walloping 46.2 million Americans living in poverty right now, it's the perfect time to start an anonymous internet thread about how much money you make and how it makes you feel, right? No, really: check out this "What's your hhi and do you FEEL poor, middle class, upper middle class or rich where you live. No judging" thread on UrbanBaby, and prepare to feel nauseous inside.
The New Yorker who feels poor on $700,000 a year should probably shack up with the guy who made $2 million and feels middle class, so they can gang up on the Greenwich Village mother who makes $180,000 and feels like "I am doing my child a disservice when she cried at age 4 because I told her we will NEVER buy a country house." Then again, maybe they should all just take advice from the guy who made $13 million, but "FEELS" upper-middle class in New York: "Under 1Bil in savings in NYC, and you cannot buy anything. Rich means being able to influence political contests," he explains. Oh, so that's how it works. No judgement. [via Daily Intel]
Families in the nation's top 1 percent are grabbing a rising share of the nation's income. So why do newly released Federal Reserve numbers show no jump in their share of the nation's wealth?
April 20, 2009
By Sam Pizzigati | TooMuchOnline.org
[...]
[I]n 2007, even without the fortunes of the Forbes 400, the top 1 percent still held a whopping 33.8 percent of America's total family wealth. Families in the bottom 90, all together, only held 28.5 percent.
Robert Frank, the Wall Street Journal reporter who covers the paper's wealth beat, finds these numbers deeply troubling — and not just for the obvious reason that they reveal a staggeringly unequal America. For Frank, the Fed numbers on the top 1 percent's wealth just don't make sense statistically.
[…]
The Wall Street Journal's Robert Frank has still another explanation for the top 1 percent statistical puzzle, an explanation that no one, he concedes, can yet prove.
Those huge incomes that go into rich people's pockets aren't translating into a greater share of the nation's wealth, Frank postulates, because the rich have been busy spending massively on "McMansions, yachts, planes, Gucci bags, bottles of Mouton Rothschild, and $300,000 watches."
The rich, in other words, have been consuming, not investing, a huge chunk of their incomes. Now some of this consumption may add to a rich person's net worth on paper. A yacht, for instance, can appreciate in value over time. But much of this consumption — a $2,632 ticket to a ballgame at the new Yankee Stadium, for instance — simply subtracts from a rich person's net worth.
Could America's rich actually be consuming, on personal pleasures, enough to put a statistically significant dent on their share of U.S. family net worth? Maybe. We have no reliable national data on rich people's personal consumption. But every so often we do get a glimpse at the immense fortunes America's rich are regularly spending to be all they can be.
The puzzle of our top 1 percent's static net worth share, for now at least, must remain unsolved. Should that bother us? Does this puzzle, in the final analysis, really matter?
Sure does. The puzzle that the Wall Street Journal's Robert Frank has identified carries much more than just statistical significance. The entire rationale for cutting taxes on the rich rests, after all, on the notion that the wealthy will "invest" the extra dollars tax cuts deliver unto them. These investments, the argument goes, will strengthen the core economy and leave all of us better off.
But if the rich are frittering away their fortunes, they're not creating wealth, they're burning through it. And that, advises the Journal's Frank, ought to be "a worrying sign for those who hope that the rich are sitting on the sidelines with loads of accumulated wealth, ready to lead us into recovery."
The professional movie critic Michael Medved (who has spent his whole adult life watching Hollywood films and then blasting Hollywood for promoting immorality and anti-American values) wants to tell me how I, a liberal, see the world. I give his lame attempt 2 thumbs down.
The ferocious fight over the Obama budget exposes some of the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives, contrasting not only their goals for the country but their desires for themselves.
All human beings feel a drive for power, but leftists and right-wingers express that urge with opposing (and often irreconcilable) strategies. They employ very different means in pursuit of power in part because they seek distinctive ends: at the most basic level, liberals want enhanced control through political authority while conservatives crave greater sway through accumulation of personal wealth. Understanding the true nature of this distinction clarifies the most polarizing political disputes that currently divide the country.
[Right, that's why Republicans don't try like hell to get elected or anything, not using tactics like gerrymandering, voter intimidation, and SC judges' 11th hour decisions. They just concentrate on making money and concede most elections to Democrats. - J]
The liberal preoccupation with governmental control characterizes every major initiative of the Obama administration. The reflexive response to the financial crisis is to blame it on insufficient regulation and to demand an instant expansion of bureaucratic authority to deal with the emergency. The left places its faith in governmental institutions, and even though most leftists will never personally involve themselves in politics or the bureaucracy, they support and trust those who do.
For instance, recent polling shows that big majorities of Americans want government to require more fuel efficient cars. Of course, the countless sincere citizens who demand such regulations could easily purchase high-mileage vehicles without waiting for some new federal policy, but the demand for sweeping regulations shows that many Americans trust bureaucrats more than they trust themselves.
Thoughtful liberals defend this deep-seated yen for government supervision by affirming that they feel no pressing need for Washington to regulate them, but they do want more rules and bureaucracy to rein in the destructive excesses of their greedy, irresponsible, selfish neighbors. In other words, leftists seek greatly enhanced power for those they consider enlightened and generous and broadminded—best exemplified, of course, by President Obama himself. They seek vastly increased funds for these wise, steady, philosopher-kings who guide the federal government, and sharply decreased money for the wealthiest, most productive private citizens (and, for that matter, for private charities). They believe that society will benefit greatly if progressive leaders define new goals in health care, energy, education and every other field, rather than relying on the often benighted impulses and preferences of the public at large. The great unwashed may enjoy "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars," but if the feds pump enough taxpayer money into PBS, maybe the culture commissars can facilitate the appreciation of higher things. In view of the painfully high cost of health insurance, tens of millions of Americans choose not purchase it – though many of them clearly can afford it. In response, progressives want to force them to get government insurance whether they want it or not, and plan to bill them (and everybody else) with increased taxes. In short, liberals seek power and influence over their fellow citizens by means of a more energetic and intrusive government, with the belief that everyone will benefit from more supervision, regulation, and social workers to administer the new agenda of compassion.
[Um, ever heard of voting? It's that thing we do every 2 years. It's when we get to choose gov't representatives who share our "often benighted impulses and preferences." Seriously, Medved would have us believe that the only time the public ever expresses personal preferences is when they buy something. - J]
While liberals seek to advance their values and priorities with more bureaucracy and federal spending, most conservatives yearn for a different sort of power: the control and privilege and security that comes from the accumulation of personal wealth. Right-wingers want above all to take care of themselves and the people closest to them – family, co-workers, friends, and fellow members of churches or other affinity groups. Conservatives generally feel less concerned about the welfare of strangers than they do about the fate of those who are close at hand, though they understand that personal success also brings benefits for the whole society. A flourishing business creates new jobs, and those workers can use their paychecks to stimulate the entire economy. Conservatives distrust bailouts, stimulus packages, welfare programs and redistribution of wealth because such initiatives reward the sort of behavior that right-wingers would never want to encourage personally.
[Naturally, being less concerned about the welfare of strangers jibes perfectly with conservative Christian morals. As Jesus said, "It's tough out there, people, so take care of your own. Let the guy in the next village worry about the next village." Or something like that. - J]
The power that conservatives most fervently desire involves self-sufficiency: the ability to control your own circumstances and your future, without depending on government or charity. Accumulating wealth – or at least putting together some modest savings – insures that you'll be well-treated more effectively than any governmental regulations or guarantees.
The contrast between the liberal and conservative pursuit of power gives the left two big advantages in politics, while providing the right with an even more substantial edge in terms of personal happiness.
In politics, the liberal focus on influencing government and controlling the status of other people allows the left to claim the mantle of superior compassion. Because leftists talk more about the welfare of strangers, they portray themselves as more idealistic and more concerned with humanity at large. By contrast, the conservative emphasis on private institutions – businesses, families, churches – is often derided as selfish and insular.
[I deride these institutions as poverty-fighters because they don't work; they haven't put a dent in poverty, or at least families and churches haven't. Indeed, during the recession people are contriubting less money to charities, despite a greater need. - J]
The left enjoys a second built-in political advantage: because of its emphasis on the importance of public life and governmental activism, the most ambitious and gifted people in the progressive community will often choose politics as a higher calling. Conservatives, with their preoccupation with the private sector, will much more likely choose to emphasize building families, businesses or communities rather than constructing electoral careers.
This means that those observers who perceive superior political ability on the liberal side of the spectrum are probably correct. Moreover, it's a structural imbalance, and not a temporary aberration – a reflection of the fact that the left sees government as a source of enlightenment and accomplishment, while the right views government as a locus of corruption and potential tyranny. It's not surprising that those who look on bureaucracy and political power most favorably will choose disproportionately to involve themselves in those pursuits.
[Wow, what an admission! Finally, Medved hits the target! Yes indeed, when you elect people to gov't who believe that gov't is bound to be cynical, inefficient, ineffective, and even corrupt, well, then... don't be surprised when that's exactly what kind of gov't you get. Just like Coca-Cola wouldn't hire a CEO who drank only tea, or you wouldn't choose a surgeon who recommended pills instead, or you wouldn't send your children to a teacher who hated kids. - J]
Conservatives, meanwhile, enjoy a mirror-image structural advantage when it comes to personal happiness. It is obviously much easier to control your own circumstances than to secure the welfare of society at large. It's inherently more possible and more satisfying to influence yourself and your intimates than to impact millions upon millions of utter strangers.
In other words, it's easier to change yourself than to change the world. [Duh. - J] It's therefore only logical that conservatives would report far higher levels of contentment and personal happiness than liberals, according to Syracuse University's Arthur Brooks (author of "Gross National Happiness"), and everyone else who's studied the subject.
[Is liberals' ennui due to their pre-occupation with the sadness, suffering, and moral complexity of our messed-up world, whereas conservatives' happiness is due to their blissful ignorance, instead spending their time thinking about the accumulation of personal wealth? Perhaps. But if you look at how Americans vote, in fact rich people -- especially the super-rich -- are more likely to vote Democrat than Republican, especially from the richest East and West coast "blue" states. This inconvenient fact kind of shoots Medved's whole theory to hell... unless we allow for the possibility that, despite all their time & effort spent trying to get rich, conservatives are still worse at making money than politically 'distracted' liberals! Can you say 'multi-tasking'? - J]
Both conservatives and liberals pursue power, but the left wants to influence other people and society at large while right-wingers want enhanced control over their personal circumstances. That contrast may give liberals the edge in many political scraps, but conservatives will still have a better and more satisfying time in the process.
Not to make too much of this article from The Economist, but… This study relates to another recent article about the importance of "positional goods" in people's everyday economic choices, i.e. how people will opt for less in absolute terms if it means having more of something relative to their friends, neighbors, and peers.
Classical economics doesn't account for this kind of human "irrationality." But real people have a funny way of defying classical economic models.
Such "irrational" behavior is in fact quite reasonable, in the context of human evolution: It hearkens back to our ancient and unaltered genetic programming to do whatever maximizes our chances for successful procreation. And such behavior reflects how people must have been "civilized" many thousands of years ago to think not just about today's interactions and transactions with other people, but how today's choices will affect what we will receive from other people in the future.
Classical economists will have to get a lot more savvy and sophisticated if they want to model human economic behavior as it really is!
Money isn't everything Jul 5th 2007|The Economist Men with a lot of testosterone make curious economic choices
PSYCHOLOGISTS have known for a long time that economists are wrong. Most economists—at least, those of the classical persuasion—believe that any financial gain, however small, is worth having. But psychologists know this is not true. They know because of the ultimatum game, the outcome of which is often the rejection of free money.
In this game, one player divides a pot of money between himself and another. The other then chooses whether to accept the offer. If he rejects it, neither player benefits. And despite the instincts of classical economics, a stingy offer (one that is less than about a quarter of the total) is, indeed, usually rejected. The question is, why?
One explanation of the rejectionist strategy is that human psychology is adapted for repeated interactions rather than one-off trades. In this case, taking a tough, if self-sacrificial, line at the beginning pays dividends in future rounds of the game. Rejecting a stingy offer in a one-off game is thus just a single move in a larger strategy. And indeed, when one-off ultimatum games are played by trained economists, who know all this, they do tend to accept stingy offers more often than other people would. But even they have their limits. To throw some light on why those limits exist, Terence Burnham of Harvard University recently gathered a group of students of microeconomics and asked them to play the ultimatum game. All of the students he recruited were men.
Dr Burnham's research budget ran to a bunch of $40 games. When there are many rounds in the ultimatum game, players learn to split the money more or less equally. But Dr Burnham was interested in a game of only one round. In this game, which the players knew in advance was final and could thus not affect future outcomes, proposers could choose only between offering the other player $25 (ie, more than half the total) or $5. Responders could accept or reject the offer as usual. Those results recorded, Dr Burnham took saliva samples from all the students and compared the testosterone levels assessed from those samples with decisions made in the one-round game.
As he describes in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the responders who rejected a low final offer had an average testosterone level more than 50% higher than the average of those who accepted. Five of the seven men with the highest testosterone levels in the study rejected a $5 ultimate offer but only one of the 19 others made the same decision.
What Dr Burnham's result supports is a much deeper rejection of the tenets of classical economics than one based on a slight mis-evolution of negotiating skills.It backs the idea that what people really strive for is relative rather than absolute prosperity. They would rather accept less themselves than see a rival get ahead. That is likely to be particularly true in individuals with high testosterone levels, since that hormone is correlated with social dominance in many species.
Economists often refer to this sort of behaviour as irrational. In fact, it is not. It is simply, as it were, differently rational.The things that money can buy are merely means to an end—social status—that brings desirable reproductive opportunities. If another route brings that status more directly, money is irrelevant.
I'm curious... if we're in the "complacency to apathy" phase in American history now, what dates would you put next to the previous 5 phases? What historical eras in America would the first 5 phases correspond to?
1. from bondage to spiritual faith; 2. from spiritual faith to great courage; 3. from courage to liberty; 4. from liberty to abundance; 5. from abundance to complacency; 6. from complacency to apathy; 7. from apathy to dependence; 8. From dependence back into bondage If you ask me, the above is a bunch of hooey! Conservatives who believe everything in America was better 100 or 150 years ago simply don't know U.S. history. I'll give you several examples of what I mean:
> Slavery was abolished when? > The black codes, Jim Crow, and "separate but equal" were overturned when? > The U.S Army stopped killing Native Americans when? > Women were allowed to vote when? > Child labor was completely abolished when? > Catholics and Jews were not openly discriminated against starting when? > Most Americans got at least a high school education starting when?
And the Professor's comment about the kind of people who voted for Bush ("taxpaying citizens") vs. Gore (welfare recipients) in 2000 couldn't be more wrong. According to a study in 2005 by the "non-partisan" (read: conservative), pro-flat tax Tax Foundation, the "blue" states that voted for Gore had the highest income per capita, and paid higher federal income tax per capita. The Tax Foundation report's editor, William Ahern, was equally mystified at why high-earning blue state residents don't vote their wallets and demand lower federal income taxes, and why poorer red staters don't vote in their own selfish interest either, demanding higher taxes on the rich and more government subsidies for themselves.
The answer to this "mystery" is a difference in political culture: Wealthier blue state residents believe in progressive taxation and helping out their fellow citizens in need; and poorer red state residents demand only the right to keep what meager income they earn. In 2003, only five blue states were net recipients of federal subsidies ( i.e. "welfare queens"); while only two red states were net payers of federal taxes (i.e. "taxpaying citizens"). 12 of the top 14 net taxpaying states were blue. In 2003, according to the Tax Foundation, the blue states contributed $966 billion in federal taxes and got $830 back; whereas the reds paid $697 billion and in return got a fat $909 billion. So, who are the real welfare queens?! (And you can judge for yourself whether the blue states lost out on federal pork because the red state Republicans controlled all 3 branches of government in 2003....)
Now forward THAT to all of your conservative friends, if you're a "taxpaying citizen" who values the truth!
On 5/10/07, Uncle T forwarded the following dumb conservative chain e-mail:
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."
"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith; 2. from spiritual faith to great courage; 3. from courage to liberty; 4. from liberty to abundance; 5. from abundance to complacency; 6. from complacency to apathy; 7. from apathy to dependence; 8. From dependence back into bondage"
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Gore: 19 Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000 Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2 Bush: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's [sic] and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
Unfortunately, those who pass this on will be members of the taxpaying public, not the freeloaders.
Here's the definition of greed: Wanting to accumulate as much wealth as possible for wealth's sake. Now we have scientific evidence that America's super-mega rich are excessively, irrationally greedy: They can't possibly spend all their money; they don't give it away; and they don't save more just to pass it on to their children and grand-children.
Some measure of greed may be necessary for capitalism to work, but at some point, we must admit it becomes a ridiculous obsession that is harmful to our nation. The "rational economic argument" for accumulating wealth just doesn't explain the acquisitive behavior of the super-mega rich. Cold, naked greed for greed's sake does. (Pardon me for pointing out the obvious).
For voyeurs of billionaires, a brief period from mid-February to mid-March serves up two of the juiciest glimpses they will get all year. In February, the Slate 60 list of the year's biggest philanthropic gifts comes out, followed in March by the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people.
This time, one name — Warren E. Buffett — will appear conspicuously on both. His fortune will probably rank second in the world behind only Bill Gates's, as it has for some years. In philanthropy, however, Mr. Buffett is No. 1 by a wide margin. Last year, he shook the world of billionaires by pledging more than $42 billion for charity — by far the largest philanthropic donation in history and close to the total of all the Slate 60 donations for the last six years combined.
You could almost see the editors at Forbes airbrushing the perplexed and stricken looks off the faces of their other billionaires. He's giving away $42 billion? Is he crazy? Certainly that is not what most of them had in mind for their fortunes.
But the move by Mr. Buffett raises the question of exactly what the other billionaires do have in mind for their money. According to the economist Christopher Carroll at Johns Hopkins University, in his article "Why Do the Rich Save So Much?," the seemingly obvious question of why people would want so much money turns out to be a real puzzle.
The rational economic argument for accumulating wealth says that people want to use it for something: to spend, to give to their families to enhance their future standard of living or to do something philanthropic.
When you look at the Slate 60 list, however, you seethat philanthropy can't be the main reason. For all of their amazing generosity, the super-rich typically do not give away their entire fortunes, or even a big share. That's what makes Mr. Buffett so notable.
For 2006, the Slate 60 not including Mr. Buffett pledged or gave a little over $7 billion to charity.Yet as of September 2006, the 60 richest Americans had an estimated $630 billion of wealth, up more than $62 billion (about 10 percent) from the year before. People are accumulating money much faster than they are giving it away.
Professor Carroll says the super-rich can't be accumulating the money with the intention of spending it, either, because no one could spend that much.
To see his point, take Oracle's founder, Lawrence J. Ellison. Mr. Ellison's net worth last year was around $16 billion. And it will probably be much bigger when the list comes out in a few weeks. With $16 billion and a 10 percent rate of return, Mr. Ellison would need to spend more than $30 million a week simply to keep from accumulating more money than he already has, to say nothing of trying to spend down the $16 billion itself.
He spent something like $100 million on his Japanese-style mansion in Woodside, Calif., making it among the more expensive private residences ever built. But that is only about three weeks worth of the interest he earns on his wealth. And a house doesn't actually spend down his net worth because it is an asset that can be resold. At least part of the $100 million is just a different way of saving.
Mr. Ellison would have to spend that $30 million a week — $183,000 an hour — on things that can't be resold, like parties or meals, just to avoid increasing his wealth. While somebody might be able to spend like that — Paris Hilton, maybe — it certainly wouldn't be easy, and it can't explain why the super-rich accumulate.
[Remember the movie "Brewster's Millions" with Richard Pryor? Remember how much trouble he had spending all that money? Just imagine "Brewster's Billions!" -- J]
The last of the seemingly rational explanations is that the billionaires want to pass it on to their children. But, again, their fortunes are growing far faster than their number of heirs, so each of the children will have the same problems spending the money that their parents had.
Sam Walton's fortune is now divided among his family, and the Forbes list will probably show that his children account for 4 of the 10 richest Americans in the world (with his wife being No. 11). The children are in their 50s and 60s, and if they live to be 80, and their wealth grows at 10 percent a year, their fortunes will rise by four to eight times and they will each have more than they can ever spend or their children can spend, and so on.
Further, the data, according to Professor Carroll, just doesn't indicate that children make much of a difference. He found in the government's 1992 Survey of Consumer Finances, for example, that only 4 percent of the richest Americans said that providing an inheritance ranked in their top five reasons for saving. On top of that, he says, the data shows that elderly super-rich people who do not have children save just as much as the ones who do.
If it isn't to spend, to give to their children, or to give to charity, then why do the rich save so much? Professor Carroll says maybe they love money, not for what it can buy but just for its own sake. Perhaps they get something different from having money — clout, power, the ability to dominate an industry. Or perhaps these are just competitive people who care about their position compared with other people on the list.
They accumulate more so they can lord it over the other families who have less — a bit like having enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world several times but making more to stay ahead of the other guy.
However you look at it, though, it isn't for the reasons that everyone else saves money.
In a few weeks, you will see the list of the world's wealthiest people and how vastly their wealth has increased. Warren Buffett will probably be the only one pledging to give his fortune away. The other billionaires will probably think he's crazy, but it may make him the most rational person on the list.
Austan Goolsbee is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a research fellow at the American Bar Foundation. E-mail: goolsbee@nytimes.com.
You wrote: "Now, after paying all those taxes, and still being able to 'manufacture some wealth,' you want to take that wealth and redistribute it to the person who couldn't manufacture any wealth 'just because' it is a 'moral incentive.'"
The moral question is: How much wealth -- created thanks in part to the freedoms, guarantees, and opportunities provided by our society -- should we let any one person accumulate before it's morally justified to say "Give something back"?
You call it "stealing" to tax the very rich (even though they're already taxed -- are they being "robbed" now, and if not, at what point does it become "stealing"??). Yet you see no problem with the fact that many of them got rich thanks to the fact they're living in the US of A. You act like they created wealth in a vacuum. You act like we should be down on our knees thanking them, and never vice-versa. You never once acknowledge that they owe the USA a great debt for their wealth creation. (If you need me to spell out the reasons why the rich should be thankful, I will, but I hope you know what I'm talking about).
I agree 100% that we should tax the working and middle class less, or nothing. You'll get no argument from me. They pay more than their fair share in income to run our government, and get much, much less in return than the rich, who get sweetheart trade deals, huge tax breaks, interest-free loans, an educated workforce, port and transportation infrastructure for their businesses, etc., etc.
If the current tax system, which unfairly burdens the middle class, isn't "class warfare," then I don't know what is. It's not class warfare if the rich admit that "we're all in this together" and they have a debt to pay to society for the wealth that they enjoy. People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have come out in favor of the estate tax, and have said that the super rich should pay more tax. They realize the current tax system encourages a hereditary aristocracy of wealth, thanks also to our money-fueled political system.
You've fallen into the same trap as a lot of smart market watchers: You think GDP and the stock market are the best indicators of the nation's economic wellbeing. Whether that wealth is accumulating at the top and not trickling down to improve people's lives, well... you don't worry about that. The economic statistics on that score are not so clear-cut, so it's easier not to think about the issue at all.
This may sound crazy to you, but "creating wealth" is not an end in itself. If that wealth, wherever it may be, is not improving people's lives, then it's not worth a hill of beans. That's where you conservatives fall flat on your faces -- you worry so much about Big Gubument and what it's taking from you personally, that you forget about the general welfare. If the current tax system isn't serving the general welfare, but instead allowing more & more wealth to accumulate at the top, then I say it's IMMORAL, BROKEN, and desperately in need of REFORM.
It's about people, Uncle T, not just dollars & cents.
1. Yes, in Bangladesh I would be rich.So what?That's why we look at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and inflation.How much does rent cost in Bangladesh, or a meal at a restaurant?When comparing developed and undeveloped countries, wealth is relative.A better comparison is between people in developed countries.Like, why does the U.S. have such a high infant mortality rate, or such high dropout rates from school?Why doesn't our wealth solve those problems?What's missing?
2.Because people don't always reap what they sow, and who are you to judge who is "deserving"?Is Paris Hilton deserving?Are Sam Walton's children deserving of being the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th richest people in the world?What did they reap to sow billions? You must be consistent and admit that people are not always to blame for being poor, just as people do not always deserve their wealth.Sometimes all the poor need is a hand to help pull themselves up.
3.In my last letter I gave you several examples of incentives that you may call "liberal" and disagree with, but they're still incentives.
4.We already have such provisions to prevent people milking the system, it's called Clinton's Welfare to Work program.It's already law that able-bodied people can't stay on welfare indefinitely.Isn't that good enough for you?
5.America allows the possibility for success for very many, but not all, people.The heart of many of our disagreements is that you accept people's starting position in life in morally neutral terms, while I do not.You and I have had many advantages in life that others have not.Yes, you worked hard and made the most of those advantages.But as a human being with empathy and sympathy, you must realize that not everybody gets such a great start in life.What do you say to those people, "Tough luck"?Or, "The world needs janitors, too"?
6.As long as people don't start out equally in life, there will never be such thing as equal opportunity.I'm realistic about that.Are you?The question is, what do we do about it?Do we just say, "Oh well, some people are born inheriting millions, others are born eating dirt, and we're morally compelled not to interfere in the status quo, because that would be stealing"?Or do we try to help people without making them dependent?
In my previous email, if you read carefully, I did answer all 4 of your questions, even though you may not have liked/agreed with my answers.
That program you liked... Which party pledged in its first 100 hours to lower the interest rate on government loans for college?
I wish you'd get over the "giveaway" issue.The kind of welfare which drives you to fits of rage is actually not so common.Most people who receive welfare get off and get back on their feet.I really don't understand why this enrages you so much.Again, I can't think of any liberals who are asking to increase "giveaways" like the ones you despise.They do, however, ask for things like: more college loans; more spending on education and pre-school programs; more spending on day care for working families; and universal access to health care.I don't consider these giveaways, since they would make working people healthier, happier, and more productive.They are also family-friendly, thus encouraging real family values.
This is a family of millionaires (Life)
