Mitt Romney Would Pay 0.82 Percent in Taxes Under Paul Ryan's Plan

[snoopy369]

Why are taxes related to social mobility? Unless you're suggesting actual redistribution of income from rich people to middle class people, anyway.

The only direct relation between government and social mobility in a non-socialist state really is in education spending, which I'd be all for more of, and infrastructure, which helps everyone and makes mobility easier simply by greasing the wheels of society in general. Everything else is either safety net, which has zero to do with social mobility (welfare certainly does not help you move up; it keeps you from moving up to some extent, the extent to be debated by various parties, but impossible to completely ignore), or general bureaucracy, which doesn't affect mobility one bit.

I would fully understand the argument that the rich should pay more because it is _fair_ that they do so. Not agree, at least fully, but understand. But that still has zero to do with social mobility, again unless you're suggesting actually directly redistributing significant amounts of money. I think you need to balance the 'fair' argument with the economic benefits (and I don't think I or anyone else should be making the argument that double taxation is unfair, either; that argument to the extent that it's made is not about fairness but about economics). Honestly the most logical 'fair' tax is a very high sliding scale consumption tax - think of MLB's luxury tax, for example. Add layers of sales tax that are based on total spending - this is trivial to do now, in the day of the credit card, and would have the benefit of not only moving tax to where it should be but also of allowing us to more easily affect consumer spending via tax policy.

[regexcellent]

America produces more in industry now than at any time in the past. It just employs fewer people doing it, which is good. Those people can now be employed doing other things.

Long ago the majority of our population was employed solely in producing food. Then along came mechanized farming, and later pesticides. With pesticides one farmer could feed fifteen people. Many farmers were no longer needed. They went on to work in other sectors. This was an economic boon.

[Wezil]

And when they finish the robotic drivers we won't need them anymore, just like the combine harvester forced farmers to learn a new trade.

We're not talking about the same people.

What about the manual laborers who simply cannot (for whatever reason) learn a trade? There used to be a place in society and the workforce for such people and increasingly there isn't. We (Canada shares in this problem) seem to be creating a permanent non-employable underclass.

Not everyone is like you, I and most posters at this forum. We are educated and reasonably intelligent (most of the time) with plenty of options available to us.

[Jon Miller]

What's so funny? Why don't you pull some ridiculous socialist principal out of a left wing blog to show us all how it's better in Sweden, then tell us about the injustice of inequality and ****?

When have I ever done that?

Live in Sweden and compare it to the US. It is quite obvious if you were to actually do so. I know many people who live in other countries (even people who prefer the US for various reasons) who realize how ridiculous the US medical system is and various other measurements.

As usual, I will provide a scholarly link:

http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2011/wp1110.pdf

JM

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

How would we restore the social mobility that used to define America? The manufacturing sector is rebounding slightly, but it is still decimated compared to where it was when our parents were young.

A) Drop the illegal alien nativist BS. Open up immigration. Immigrants want to come here and have drive to make things happen unlike the slug 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. generation content Americans

B) Need to roll back regulations

c) Need to establish litigation caps

[Lorizael]

(We should all welcome snoopy back to non-sports OT.)

[Jon Miller]

The only direct relation between government and social mobility in a non-socialist state really is in education spending, which I'd be all for more of, and infrastructure, which helps everyone and makes mobility easier simply by greasing the wheels of society in general. Everything else is either safety net, which has zero to do with social mobility (welfare certainly does not help you move up; it keeps you from moving up to some extent, the extent to be debated by various parties, but impossible to completely ignore), or general bureaucracy, which doesn't affect mobility one bit.

Not true.

If you have a safety net, you are able to take the entrepreneurial risks that only wealthy people can normally take (they don't risk death taking, a poor person is.)

JM

[snoopy369]

Only while the draft is going on, and until I get frustrated enough with the moronic comments in some threads (not this one so far, hence why i'm posting in it) that I go away again

[regexcellent]

If you have a safety net, why bother to take risks when you can just lie down on that safety net? Simplistically speaking, you're subsidizing poverty.

[Guynemer]

A) Drop the illegal alien nativist BS. Open up immigration. Immigrants want to come here and have drive to make things happen unlike the slug 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. generation content Americans

B) Need to roll back regulations

c) Need to establish litigation caps

Definitely with you on a) and c), though I'm not sure how a) will necessarily fix what we are talking about here. b) is a bit to general; in some cases, no doubt, it would make sense; in others, it could (and likely would) be a ****ing disaster.

(We should all welcome snoopy back to non-sports OT.)

A-****ing-men.

[Wezil]

(We should all welcome snoopy back to non-sports OT.)

I was going to do that.

Good to see you snoopy.

[Lorizael]

If you are rich, why bother to take risks when you can just lie down on that bed of money?

ftfy

[Hauldren Collider]

Not true.

If you have a safety net, you are able to take the entrepreneurial risks that only wealthy people can normally take (they don't risk death taking, a poor person is.)

JM

And yet people in poor countries tend to be vastly more entrepreneurial than those in wealthy countries.

[snoopy369]

Not true.

If you have a safety net, you are able to take the entrepreneurial risks that only wealthy people can normally take (they don't risk death taking, a poor person is.)

JM

That is absolutely incorrect. The people taking those sorts of risks aren't qualifying for welfare, and even if they take a risk (say, an investment or taking a risky job or something) they generally have something to turn to to make money in need - for example, if I lost everything doing something stupid, I could easily work in retail and do fairly well for myself. In general, safety nets keep people from striving up, because they don't have to - if you HAVE to work to get food, you will. More importantly, though, safety nets from the government are a lot easier to rely on for a long time than more localized safety nets. If you were starving, temporarily, and couldn't get welfare, your family would probably feed you - but you'd feel really bad about it, right? You'd want to get back to work so you could make up for what they gave you, and pay it forward or whatever. Often not the case for the government, where there's not someone you personally know who a) makes you feel guilty and b) actually suffers for your need.

Further, a lot of the safety net is not direct money (ie, welfare/afdc) but is things like medicaid - which does not in any way contribute to social mobility, and solely serves to keep people alive who otherwise probably wouldn't be alive (as well as handling some of the costs our hospitals would otherwise pass on to the wealthier patients anyway, for indigent patients).

[Hauldren Collider]

ftfy

Taking risks is exactly how Mitt Romney made his bed of money.