BF2S Forums And cunt of the week goes to...

Jenspm wrote:

lowing wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

We don't seem to have that problem in Norway, despite having one of the highest tax rates in the world. The maximum tax is around 54%, and a large portion of the population (around 20% I think) pay this. Norway is also the country with the highest average retirement age in Europe.

As Varegg said, people don't flee the country because they believe they are getting value for money with their taxes (in addition to a feeling of 'home' and whatnot, but yeah)

There are many, many things I'd change about the Norwegian system, mind, but it's more to show that high taxes doesn't have to mean people stop working or move.

No you don't have that problem in Norway. Norway also does not have the responsibilities taken on by the US either. Norway loves to sit back and reap the rewards for the security provided to it by everyone else, then has the nerve to talk down to other countries that we are spending too much money on military. Wonder what the European economy would look like if the US just pulled stakes and left you all to figure out how you will defend yourselves against, well, yourselves.

I have not been to Norway, but I have been to Germany and though I was only there for a month I was left with a positive impression on the attitudes the German people have for their communities. I didn't see beggars on the corners. I saw clean communities with friendly people. We simply do not have that here in the states. We have workers and producers, then we have people who want to thrive on entitlement and handouts. These people are mostly liberals who will vote for anyone that will ensure those entitlements on the backs of the rest of us. Democrats cater to them for their votes.

We have a country where half want to work for themselves, and the other half want to leech off of our work. When you have half the people that have the rewards of hard work taken away for someone elses benefit and the other half that does not want to work for their own benefit, you are doomed as a society.

Yeah, sorry for not making it clear - I am fully aware that some economic systems are better suited to some countries than others. I can't really imagine implementing a socialist/progressivist system in the US - it seems too big, too diverse, and there is an underlying culture that just doesn't line up with it.

Jay wrote:

lowing wrote:

13urnzz wrote:

yes, you claimed it.


what a cop out. i was following the thread, and you wrote in the thread.

this is why i don't want you speaking for Americans.

I said, I speak for all Americans? Sorry burnzz, I am not as arrogant as you jay or varegg.

I love that you define people as arrogant based on the fact you can't follow the conversation due to your own ignorance.

Last edited by lowing (2011-08-02 13:53:07)

Jenspm wrote:

lowing wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

I actually partly agree with Jay on this one. I've never been a fan of "taxing the hell out of the rich" just for the sake of taxing them. As you touched upon, Jay, I believe in the government doing its best to create equal opportunity in the path to success, and by that I mean attempting to eliminate factors that you don't have control of - like, say, the wealth and success of your parents.

That is why I am against private schools, and want free state schools for everyone up to and including high school. That is why I want universities that are cheap, if not free, and a government handing out cheap loans, so that going to university, and where you are going, is never a question of how much your parents earn, or how much your parents are willing to pay, or where they're willing to send you.

In addition to this, I also believe that there are a handful of services you should have the right to access, no matter who you are. An example of this is the access to medical help. I do not believe that you should be able to pay your way to better doctors, better facilities or pay to cut in front of others in the waiting line. So I'm against private hospitals.

And finally, there are some goods that I believe the government should sponsor/subsidize for the sake of 'the common good'. This can be environmental issues by subsidizing public transport and taxing fuel, for example.

There are a lot of things I want to be government-supported, and this obviously has to be paid for. I think that the taxes paying for this have to be based on how much you're able to pay, and that means higher percentages for the more wealthy. 50% is a lot more for someone on $40k pr. year than it is for someone on $1mill.

So yes, I'd tax the rich more and the poor less, but that is for the sake of equal opportunity, rather than equal wealth. It is not an effort to drag down or punish the rich (which seems to be an idea that's far more prevalent in the UK), but rather building a common base to work from and supporting the society as a whole.


So yeah, there's my personal political philosophy in a nutshell, I guess. Off-topic? Nah.

Sounds good on paper, but explain why 1 citizen should have to pay 50% of 1 million dollars, ( $500,000) while another citizen only pays 10% of 40,000 dollars ( $4,000) all for the same EXACT services. Then explain why the person who works for that 1 million dollars would have the inclination to keep doing so if all that was gunna happen is, the govt. was gunna take it from him? Or is his motivation supposed to be the PRIVILEGE of working harder to pay more for govt. service than anyone else?  If yo do not think you are punishing success in such a scenario we will just have to agree to disagree

There is, of course, a limit as to how much you can tax before the work force lose motivation. I personally believe that this hovers somewhere around 50%.

Yes, the rich would pay more for the same services. But if we'd set the tax at, say, $4k pr. person regardless of income, we wouldn't be able to afford the equality that I want from society. I'd rather have the tax differences.

There is also an argument that in a system like this the rich can thank the system for being guaranteed the platform/opportunity to get to where they are now, whereas in a low-tax system they'd be highly handicapped if they were to be born in a poor, lower-class family.

west-phoenix-az wrote:

almost time for a new cunt!

FEOS wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

lowing wrote:

Sounds good on paper, but explain why 1 citizen should have to pay 50% of 1 million dollars, ( $500,000) while another citizen only pays 10% of 40,000 dollars ( $4,000) all for the same EXACT services. Then explain why the person who works for that 1 million dollars would have the inclination to keep doing so if all that was gunna happen is, the govt. was gunna take it from him? Or is his motivation supposed to be the PRIVILEGE of working harder to pay more for govt. service than anyone else?  If yo do not think you are punishing success in such a scenario we will just have to agree to disagree

There is, of course, a limit as to how much you can tax before the work force lose motivation. I personally believe that this hovers somewhere around 50%.

Yes, the rich would pay more for the same services. But if we'd set the tax at, say, $4k pr. person regardless of income, we wouldn't be able to afford the equality that I want from society. I'd rather have the tax differences.

There is also an argument that in a system like this the rich can thank the system for being guaranteed the platform/opportunity to get to where they are now, whereas in a low-tax system they'd be highly handicapped if they were to be born in a poor, lower-class family.

When you factor in all taxes, the upper-income brackets pay well over 50% in taxes. That includes income, sales, state, local, property, etc. Everyone from outside the US keeps focusing solely on the federal income tax rate...we pay a lot more taxes than just income tax.

Jenspm wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

There is, of course, a limit as to how much you can tax before the work force lose motivation. I personally believe that this hovers somewhere around 50%.

Yes, the rich would pay more for the same services. But if we'd set the tax at, say, $4k pr. person regardless of income, we wouldn't be able to afford the equality that I want from society. I'd rather have the tax differences.

There is also an argument that in a system like this the rich can thank the system for being guaranteed the platform/opportunity to get to where they are now, whereas in a low-tax system they'd be highly handicapped if they were to be born in a poor, lower-class family.

When you factor in all taxes, the upper-income brackets pay well over 50% in taxes. That includes income, sales, state, local, property, etc. Everyone from outside the US keeps focusing solely on the federal income tax rate...we pay a lot more taxes than just income tax.

Yeah, so do we. As I said earlier, I think my father sends in around 80% of his income when the taxes are due. And that's (obviously) before sales tax and the like.

FEOS wrote:

Hail Marx...

Varegg wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Hail Marx...

Will just add something to that ... if you have a tax at 80% like Jenspms dad you make so much money that whatever you have left is enough to buy a small African country!

Last edited by Jenspm (2011-08-03 04:24:37)

Jay wrote:

I don't bring up 'unrelated crap'.

Jay wrote:

You were using the word consumerist incorrectly the entire time. What you were really referring to was 'conspicuous consumption'. You dislike people that overtly display their wealth, yes? The guy that drives a Hummer and knowingly gets 4 mpg bothers you greatly, yes? For a society to be too 'consumerist' as you were putting it, by definition means that a society is too free in your eyes. Consumerism is just a democratic representation of a market. People want things, other people create them. It's organic. There is no omnipresent being in the sky telling people what they should or shouldn't buy, nor should there be.

Jay wrote:

Any line drawn is completely arbitrary and is based on the present economic standing of the opinion holder. Why do you think class warfare in politics works? It feeds on emotion. "That other asshole has more toys than I think he should be allowed to have, let's tax him more." Of course, if this unnamed jealous person was the one with more toys, the line would be drawn elsewhere. It is pure jealousy, which in turn leads to hatred and anger.

Jay wrote:

Because you obviously wish to limit people and control their decisions for them, I brought up the 'unrelated' Marxist/Keynes as symbols of totalitarianism. Now, I threw out the word elitist too. Who but an elitist would deign to think he can make decisions for others? Marxist? Check. Conspicuous consumption was a term coined by the man himself and pushed along by Bertrand Russell.

Jay wrote:

Everyone else seems to have understood the connections I was making, perhaps you should go back and read the primary sources instead of spitting out the same garbled message the ignorant greenies like to foist on the rest of us.

FEOS wrote:

Varegg wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Hail Marx...

Will just add something to that ... if you have a tax at 80% like Jenspms dad you make so much money that whatever you have left is enough to buy a small African country!

But you're still giving 80 cents of every dollar you earn to the state. It doesn't matter how much you have left over...it's still only twenty percent of what you earned for your efforts.

That's essentially the state saying, "Twenty percent of your pay is enough for you. You don't need any more than that...but I do."

I just don't see how people can NOT take issue with that.

We have similar upper marginal tax rates in this country (once you take into account all taxes paid). Yet the current administration has the audacity to say that those income brackets "aren't being asked to pay anything" (he actually said that in a speech during this "debt crisis"). It's fucking astonishing, tbh. The top 1% of wage earners pay 24% of the income taxes collected. The top 20% pay 70% of them.