Ricter is an aging delusional ex prison guard. He did too many drugs when he was a hippy, back when marxist clap trap was en vogue. His brain was so fried from doing drugs when he was a hippy that he confused this clap trap which was used to bed dirty, slutty hippy women for actual solid logic. Now, decades later, having seen that every nation which undertook to make such ideas into policy has miserably failed, and usually killed millions of their own people through starvation, disease, or political purging, his fried alcoholic/drug ravaged brain still thinks of the "good old days" and clings to these stupid, dated ideologies... Don't worry about him, he's pretty harmless. Good for entertainment and insight into deranged marxist thinking.
I am all in favor of a law taxing the income of Warren Buffet, George Soros, and every other billionaire in favor of Obama at 90%. Leave the rest of us out of it.
Sorry I posted before I saw that you adequately dealt with the topic. I swear to God Tom, for years I've been on this board trying to get people to understand the source of our prosperity. Liberals want to believe it was the "New Deal" and the "Great Society" and the empowering of the labor unions when it reality it was our military might. Quite ironic that the left attacks the military so much when it was that same military that the left used in the 1940's and 1950's to give them their prosperity.
Warren Buffett represents big business, in fact he is big business. He knows deficit spending hurts big business. He also knows Government spending helps big business. Therefore Big business perfers higher taxes. Buffett is the grand lobbyist for big business. Why do Liberals think he represents anything but big business.
All that about the US success after WWII, because our manufacturing was intact and the rest of the world needed our products is true, but misses my point. Those conditions could have allowed a two-tiered slave or fascist state to prosper, for a few, as well. Our middle class grew because it was encouraged to grow, and it was taxes and redistribution via a social contract written together by unions, business, and government that made it happen. This is not to say that entrepreneurship, the freedom to start and own a business did not play a part, it did. But entrepreneurs of the time succeeded despite the high taxes. Now that the world no longer needs our production (as much), a process in the "making" for 30 years, the promises made, eg. pensions, and the social contract, are largely gone.
Fascism is pretty "progressive" economically speaking. Fascism advocates for progressive tax structures, lots of benefits/reductions for families/children. Economic protectionism, housing for single mothers, large families, etc. It's mostly just a nationalistic version of socialism, with the top tax brackets being a bit lower typically... And yes, pensions are largely gone because they have bankrupted the companies who were strong armed into offering them by the mafia let unions. Then of course the big companies learned how to buy out the growing government in order to survive. Now they whole is falling apart.
the fact that the rich should give more is not a given. however, i object to the raising of taxes until the government gets its spending in order. the solution is not raising taxes WITHOUT responsible spending. otherwise you just get california.
Buffett should have been paying 90% rate right from the start decades ago. He would now be known as Warren Who?, the common thousandaire screeching for lower taxes, for his grandchildren that he disowned.
You keep insisting that rich people paid high taxes. They did not. Let me repeat what I said in my previous post. Rich people in the 1950s-1960s paid about 23% of their income in federal taxes due to the utilization of tax shelters (leveraged non-recourse) and offshore banking. The very wealthiest people in the country (eg, Rockefellers) kept large portions of their wealth out of the country and away from the IRS. There never were high "effective" taxes for rich people in this country, only high "published" tax rates. Also, do some research on per capita government spending on federal social programs and education in the 1950's and 1960s. Adjusted for inflation, it was 50% LESS back then than it is now. There is more government redistribution of wealth today than there was back then. In the 1950s-1960s the largest part of the budget was spent on fighting the Korean War, Vietnam War and a massively expensive Cold War with the Soviet Union. Unions did improve standards of living for the middle class in the 1950s-1960s, but that was because the US was a virtual manufacturing monopolist for 20 years after WWII. Large manufacturers could not easily move to a low-cost location back then, so they gave the unions high wages in exchange for not striking. The manufacturers then passed those higher wage costs along to their customers in the form of higher prices. That's impossible in today's competitive global manufactruing environment.