American Inequality

[KeithE]

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[Sandy]

Inequity is much simpler. When someone can earn $30 million in a year, and pay a 14% tax rate, and someone else earns $88,000 and pays a 23% tax rate, that's inequity, and it is government enforced redistribution of the wealth, not to mention that a larger portion of spendable income has been tapped. Why can't we all just pay a standard 21% tax rate? Because those of us who advocate for that are not in the 1% of the population that can afford to buy and pay for Congress.

[William Thornton]

I don't think Keith will mind my noting that one of his old redistributionist stand-bys is his belief that government should intervene in private employment contractual relationships between willing participants in such a way that legislators would empower bureaucrats to determine the pay of corporate leaders...lest they be paid more than enforcers of "fairness" have determined that they "deserve."

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Keith:

One notes that a contract between the gummit and a private individual is necessarily based upon on those provisions agreeable to them both. If the gummit says, "You get no money from us unless your janitors are paid the same as the CEO" then the private contractor can either play ball or try and get work elsewhere. That is different than the gummit imposing their arbitrary version of fairness on contracts between two private individuals. "MLB, you cannot pay your star pitcher $20mil a year unless you pay your janitors 1/100th of that."

But I appreciate your recognizing and labeling the argument for what it is: redistribution decreed by gummit.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Elite athletes are highly paid because people are happy to pay to spectate. No problem there for me. No one will pay to watch the janitor sweep floors.

[KeithE]

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[KeithE]

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[KeithE]

[Sandy]

The US has pursued the economic policies and plans of the Republican party on several occasions since the turn of the century, and it has essentially produced the same results each time its been tried. It's various versions of "trickle down" economics. Cut the tax rates for wealthy, deregulate business, finance the government through the middle class, and according to them, that produces prosperity through a balanced economy. When this has resulted in a more laissez-faire approach in government, such as during the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, and GW Bush, severe recession has resulted. When the government has taken a more balanced approach, like Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan, the recessions haven't been as bad.

Fact Checker confirmed Clinton's assertion the other night that the number of jobs created in Democratic administrations in the White House since the depression is about double the number created by Republicans during the same period of time, and that economic expansion has averaged four to five percent greater under Democratic economic policy.

I don't think we really know what Romney/Ryan actually plans to do with economic policy if they win. They haven't really said much about it, interestingly enough. They are probably searching for ways to put it in terms so that people won't recognize it is the same policy that led to recession in the first place. Basically, what they propose is exactly what the Democrats are saying, a tax increase for the middle class, and the closing of middle class deductions to pay for a 2 trillion dollar tax cut for millionaires. And along with that, major cuts in what they consider to be "entitlement" programs which will plunge senior adults into financial desperation. That's basically it in a nutshell.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: KeithE, when you write "The Hoover Institute is a propaganda machine and I’m ashamed it is associated with my alma mater. But it does carry on the failed policies advocated by their namesake (Herbert Hoover) who led us into the Great Depression."


I have to ask where would your home state of Arizona have been if Herbert Hoover had not led in the creation of the Bolder (Now Hoover) Dam as the US Secretary of Commerce and President?

What "failed policies of Hoover's do you blame for the Great Depression? " Indeed he was President at the time of the crash but like Obama he inherited a mess, with uncontrolled speculation in the Stock market.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Speaking of being kept form the convention; in 2000 an aspiring young Democrat by the name of Obama went to Denver planing to attend but could not get credentials to get in and when he got back to Chicago And tried to rent a car his credit card was rejected as being over the limit. How then did he gain so much experience in the Next 8 years to be the party's Nominee ?

[KeithE]

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[Sandy]

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[KeithE]