Dunvegan

You're making the mistake of confusing the word 'socialism' with left-wing politics. The Nazis were a National Socialist party but it was right-wing socialism rather than left-wing socialism which meant that they placed a lot of emphasis on aspects such as social integration and opposed things like individualism which are prevalent in capitalist systems.

Ah, sorry, botched that up. Fascism is what I was looking for, not communist. They were part of the "Socialist" party, in a way, but they practiced fascism. In my haste I didn't reread what I posted and made myself look like an idiot. Lesson learned!

Talking about the new deal times. Did you even read what I posted?

Not gunna bother responding to the rest of your post. Cant argue with someone who argues semantics. Loopholes and tax breaks. LOL
If a loophole was not legal like a tax break then we wouldn't be able to get away with it.../../public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif
and I ssay again. I used loophole cause thats what the person I was quoting used.

I did read what you said, but there seemed, to me, to be a discrepancy between the discussion of the how the work of the Unions had been diminished and how we sell labor at $7, since Unions sell their work at a much, much higher price. Whatever you meant was lost on me, apparently.

Anyway, never said a loophole was illegal. Just a loophole. It's in the gray area of morality, like I said. This sorta explains it a bit more: http://www.wisegeek....ax-loophole.htm

But this doesn't really matter and, yes, it is semantics, I suppose...but feel free to ignore my whole post, if you wish.

Technically, you could take away ALL of the money from ALL big business in the U.S and we would still be 10 trillion in debt. My friend (an economist) was trying to reason with the people at the protests and they called him a nazi... lol
It's kind of funny because nazis were socialists which is basically what these people "want" .... lulz. I seriously don't think taking shits on police cars and calling people nazis will make anyone take these people seriously.

Sorry, I take an interest in history and had to correct this. Nazi's were strongly against socialism. They /hated/ it. The Russians were socialists under Stalin. Really, at the end of the day, there was little to no difference between the two leaders - both killed huge numbers of people to get what they wanted.

We would have more money to spend if we taxed the rich more. Just like they did before the 70's

Its black and white.



tax breaks, loopholes whatever you want to call it. Doesnt matter. I said loophole cause thats the term random used, the person I quoted in my postO_o

IF WE HAVE MORE MONEY COMING IN THEN WE WOULD NOT NEED TO CUT SOCIAL PROGRAMS.
BUT WHAT WE COULD DO IS SAVE TRILLIONS BY NOT OCCUPYING COUNTRIES FOR 10 YEARS. BUT THAT WOULD MEAN NOT SPENDING THOSE TRILLIONS ON LOCKHEED AND MARTIN AND HALIBURTON. EXACTLY THE PEOPLE WE SHOULD BE TAXING MORE.

common sense.

All the remnants of the new deal are gone. All the hard work the unions fought is diminished. It is now the standard to sell our labor at $7 an hour and be happy with it. Its disgusting.

Tax break are not loopholes. A loophole is a way to avoid being taxed, whereas a tax break is something written in tax laws that allows you to pay less. One is in the gray area of morality, while the other is totally fine.

Lastly, bringing in more money will not entirely solve the dilemma that we find ourselves in. Our government already grossly overspends on everything - bringing in more money is essentially inviting them to pay more for things we don't need. If you want to take an isolationists stand on the United States, then that would solve the issue of invading/squatting in other countries - we wouldn't. We would be solely on our own with little to no interest in the outside world. This could solve some economic troubles, as with the isolationist view we would probably be more interested in buying American-made products, which would be a huge boost to the economy and help bring revenue in.

Social programs are well and good, but they are sorely broken and do not help the people that they need to be helping. I know far too many people in my neighborhood are using their "social program" money to pay for drugs or the Mercedes that they have in their driveway, despite the fact that they have no job and their house is falling apart.

Receiving more money is not the only solution. We have to fix what's broken - the US spending habits - first before we can take another step. We need to decide what the role of government is, too: is it there to protect us from foreign hands only? Are they supposed to coddle its people? Are they there to keep the states from infighting?

The problems we have are not so black-and-white as many would like to think. There is not one easy solution that will magically solve the problem. The government is broken as it is, and it must be fixed...and the people need to decide how to fix it. We have a protest going on, sure...but they haven't really offered up a real, viable solution (as far as I'm aware, though I haven't paid much attention to what's going on).

Oh, and Unions...Unions are a mess. I refuse to accept that a man who does nothing but screw in a screw on a single part, and is expected to do this fifty times in one day and then is allowed to rest and watch movies for the remainder of their shift, should be paid $32 an hour. My entire family works in Unions. Their pay is disgusting, especially considering what little work they do. Nobody wants to hire Union workers because they get paid so ridiculously. Yes, the Unions were originally good, but somewhere along the line they got messed up.

I'm very sorry to hear the story of your aunt and cousin. Please don't take this personally - I'd like to keep this a calm debate, if possible.

As for your loophole idea, I think you may be thinking more of tax breaks when it comes to us plebeians, not necessarily loopholes. There are many loopholes, it seems, for larger corporations, and nobody seems willing to cinch these holes up to making it harder for evasion of certain taxes. Again, this relates to money being as powerful (and corrupting) as it is, but that is the world in which we live.

The highest rate of income tax was 94% in 1944 - but compare that to the 41% income tax at the lowest end of the spectrum and you see a very large difference between then and now. Everybody was taxed heavily, and now it's not so much. Yes, the obscenely rich are taxed at 33%, but the lowest end of the spectrum is at 10%. Take from that what you will.

Economics has three different issues relating to taxes. The one that relates most closely to this debate is the idea that taxing the rich makes one less likely to want to be rich, and so there is less incentive to earn money, which means that there is less income to tax and the government loses out on money potentially earned. I am not arguing mathematics, but this is something that is pushed forward in economics, and it is the way people can think of these matters.

Whether or not taxing the rich more will solve all the problems can be debated: first we should look towards frivolous spending and pork-barrel idiocies and get rid of them. But this digresses from the topic at hand.

I agree with Random with this one, and I am also nowhere near wealthy - our household income is only slightly above the "poverty" line.

I do agree that there is a huge disparity between the amount of money that the 1% has compared to the rest of us, however there isn't much of a way to remove the power that they have unless we totally revamp our government and make it a total, direct democracy. Truth is, money talks and money is power. This has been true since Roman times and possibly earlier still. It's not just the way of the United States.

Do I like the disproportionate amount of money between the one percent and us, and the power that the one percent has? No. I would love to change the amount of power that they have. But to do that we first have to change our government from a representative republic to a direct democracy, so then everyone's voice is truly equal and money really has little say in anything. Whether or not that would be the best course for the country is not what I'm debating, so please don't bash me for that.

I love the two of the greatest hits songs. Not that they're hilarious...they're just really good.

Harley of Seville/When The Hell Is It Gonna Get Dark