Why poor people support tax breaks for the rich?

seyo

In Slaughterhouse 5, KV describes how American Fascists convinced poor Americans to hate each other, and themselves. He couldn’t have been more correct in his diagnosis of our national cultural disease.

http://narrowstreetsla.blogspot.com David Yoon

Is there a “Love” button?

Skowronek

Another spin on a class-agnostic discussion. Is it so incomprehensible that [some] people actually believe in trickle-down economics. Quit trying to fill the world full of BS and class-based propaganda.

http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

It…it is pretty incomprehensible. I mean, I know people believe in like…a Flat Earth, too, but…still…pretty incomprehensible in practice. Class agnostic! Amazing. Is that a real thing? Are there really people who are like “bah, legacy of long term inherited wealth patterns? AN ILLUSION! I’m sure you believe in dinosaurs too, & the pyramids!”
poon hound

I know, like that whole “industrial revolution” bulls#%t.
Donald Petersen

Is it so incomprehensible that [some] people actually believe in trickle-down economics.

To me, yes, it is. When I look at the benefits that trickled down to my old buddies from the trailer park during the last thirty years of supply-side economics, and I hear them still idolizing the president who sold them on the concept back when we were kids, I find it utterly incomprehensible that they haven’t risen in revolt long since. Maybe they just can’t afford the torches and pitchforks. I’m sorely tempted to just dismiss them as willfully ignorant rubes, but I’m told that that’s not helpful.

Perhaps they feel that they somehow deserve the layoffs and stagnant wages. I don’t know what sin they feel guilty of, but when they consistently vote against their own interests in favor of sucking off the shade of Adam Smith, I must confess myself fairly baffled as to their thought processes.

Then again, I have no doubt that Ye Olde Captains of Industry maintain a staunch faith indeed in trickle-down economics. Their every action is assiduously focused upon ensuring that the trickle remains ever-so-tricklish. Were it to increase to something as dramatic as a “flow,” to say nothing of “torrent” or “gusher,” their heads might explode.
- Duncan McPherson
  
  Even back in the 19th century, “trickle down economics” was seen as a scam.
  
  http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5354/
JohnnySmith0

Yeah since it doesn’t work and it has nothing to do with invigorating economy.
http://www.facebook.com/jason.shankel Jason Shankel

Yes, it’s impossible to believe that after 30 years of abject failure, anyone still believes in trickle-down economics. Taxes are at the lowest point in 60 years. Regulation is lighter than at any point in that time. Where is all the prosperity?
Chevan

“Is it so incomprehensible that [some] people actually believe in trickle-down economics.”

Well, considering that trickle-down economics has been pretty thoroughly shown to not work at all in practice, yes, it’s incomprehensible.
- travtastic
  
  Whatever, that’s just ‘in practice’.
  
  It works great in my head.
allen

” Is it so incomprehensible that [some] people actually believe in trickle-down economics. “Not really, although *believe* would be the operative term, because there isn’t a lot of evidential support of that theory.

I think you might want to at least read the wikipedia entry on that term. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics)

Then look at these charts: http://www.faireconomy.org/research/TrickleDown.html Lowering the taxes on the rich has been tried many times, and it has never produced growth in our GDP, average income, wages, or employment. When the rich tell you to give them money so that they can spend it better than you, don’t believe them.

The idea of trickle-down is that if you invest in top earners, they make more money. Then they do something productive with it. However, in practice- companies tend to take that investment overseas, and the rich tend to either save it in safe investments (effectively freezing the money) or invest it in companies, which take that investment overseas.

Our current crisis is due to capital not moving. Investing in the rich is not a prescription to fixing that. If you accepted the premise that the rich are better savers than the poor, then a bubble-up economy would make a lot of sense right now. Firstly, it would help the poor, who are the ones in trouble. Secondly, because we view them as poor savers, that money would immediately be spent. Locally. And then spent again. And again. Until it bubbled up to a corporation that would take it overseas, or a rich person who would save it. In any event, that dollar would bounce around our economy a LOT more.

I also find it a little weird that when you give money to the rich, it’s trickle down economics, but when you give it to the poor, it’s welfare.
- Gulliver
  
  I also find it a little weird that when you give money to the rich, it’s
  trickle down economics, but when you give it to the poor, it’s welfare.
  
  When you give it to the largest corporations, it’s corporate welfare. Few things my Congress did in recent years ticked me off more (and that’s saying a lot) than the no-strings-attached TARP/Stimulus money it blithely handed over to the likes of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the other firms that brought down the market with their shell games.
- Michael Cohn
  
  “I also find it a little weird that when you give money to the rich, it’s
  trickle down economics, but when you give it to the poor, it’s welfare.”
  
  Brilliant!
http://twitter.com/djshiva DJ Shiva

It’s not incomprehensible that some people actually believe in trickle-down economics; it’s incomprehensible WHY they actually believe in trickle-down economics.
Caleb White

Did you answer your own argument? Isn’t trickle-down dogma the very BS and class-based propaganda you are railing against?
http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell

I don’t see how this is “spin”. It was a study that had pretty definite results.
Michael Cohn

Yes, there are may people who espouse it (mainly the rich), and some who believe in it as well (the stupid),
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=709466113 Trogmorisen Teg Halivater

Jason, are you rich or do you actually believe that after decades of failure of “trickle down economics” it actually works for the majority? Or are you being sarcastic?

KBert

This is such sad news; but, even sadder, not that surprising.

Antinous / Moderator

A few years ago, I read a book that cited a survey asking people if they would rather (assuming equivalent buying power of a dollar) make $50K annually in a town with an average income of $25K, or make $100K in a town with an average income of $200K. Turns out that being richer than the neighbors is more important than actual wealth.

If you think about how people (in the US at least) have become desperate to become famous, it seems predictable.

gadgetphile

It seems that there may have been a cost of living angle to the “making more than the Jonses” idea. But then there’s also the quality of life too…

As for the original article- it means that there’s a point where once the middle class becomes too small, there are both enough lower class and upper class supporting lower taxes for the rich, further increasing that divide.
dragonfrog

Another way of interpreting that – actual wealth is a function of income and cost of living, not just of income, and that people understand that.

In a town where the average income is $25K, rent, groceries, and food will be priced accordingly, and $50K will probably get you a nice apartment anywhere in town you want, an entertainment budget that lets you go out and have fun reasonably often, and some savings every month.

In a town where the average income is $200K, things will be priced accordingly too. $100K will probably get you a tiny apartment in an inconvenient neighbourhood with long annoying commutes, and a stark choice between going out with your friends once in a while, or having any savings at all.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  What part of ‘equivalent buying power of a dollar’ wasn’t clear?
  - dragonfrog
    
    What part of ‘equivalent buying power of a dollar’ wasn’t clear?
    
    Ah, the part where I missed it.
    
    Although, you can say “assuming equivalent buying power of a dollar”, and people can nod their heads, but will they really believe it and internalize it? I wonder to what extent people answering that question were still using their practical knowledge that it’s a completely unrealistic assumption to think a dollar will go exactly as far in two places where the mean incomes are an order of magnitude apart.
    
    Because the assumption that there would be equivalent buying power is clearly a bogus one – I can go, “sure, OK, thought experiment”, but I still can’t get over the feeling that if I said “yeah, gimme the $100K” I’d be like someone who excitedly takes a Silicon Valley job based on the dollar value of the salary, and then learns the bitter truth that he actually took a big pay cut once his bills were paid.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Yeah, it’s a theoretical scenario. But the fact that everybody interprets it to mean that decreased relative income is worse than decreased absolute income betrays a strong prejudice in financial judgment.
    - hab
      
      I think that it may mean that many of the survey participants misunderstood the premise as well–therefore leaving the results (and interpretations thereof) rather suspect.
  - bbonyx
    
    I wish I had the ability to “like” that 20 times.
  - onepieceman
    
    “What part of ‘equivalent buying power of a dollar’ wasn’t clear?”
    
    What “equivalent” relates to. I think you’re looking at it as equivalent purchasing power of product and not seeing there’s another, equally rational interpretation. A TV in one town costs the same as in the other. But I think many people think in terms of equivalent purchasing power of experience. If you’re poor, and so are your friends, the you can have a great night by staying in and drinking some cheap beers. But if everyone around you is much richer, then their idea of a night out might be jetting down to the nearest Marina. Suddenly, you’re excluded. Not an equivalent experience to the beer evening, even though price of beer and plane tickets is the same in both towns.
    Bottom line, rather poorly constructed question which makes interpretation hard.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Demetria-Williams-Parks/536946740 Demetria Williams Parks

i’m a big lefty who doesn’t mind being at the bottom, but i think i would take the $50,000 too considering the cost of living is probably higher in the the $200,000 town. but i tend to over think things.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Once again, why is it so difficult to read what I actually wrote? A dollar buys the same amount in both scenarios.
  - Daneel
    
    I’ve always liked to be in places where I feel I’m dragging them down to my level.
  - mccrum
    
    Yes, but a one bedroom apartment in New York requires more dollars than one in Detroit (for a real-life example of your 200,000/25,000 average income)
    - Donald Petersen
      
      Yeah, but it doesn’t enter into it. A better survey question might have posited two streets in the same city, one wherein you’re the $50k recipient on a street full of $25k proles, and around the bend is the house wherein you’re the $100k baronet on a street full of $200k earls.
      
      The point being lots of people would prefer the big fish in a small pond situation, even though it makes them half as rich as the small dolphin in the sea of whales.
      
      I mix my metaphors in an Osterizer… sorry about that.
    - mccrum
      
      That I’m down with.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Same buying power. What about that is so massively complicated that nobody can comprehend it?
    - twency
      
      It’s because the hypothetical scenario is illogical. If one town has an average income of $25K and the other an average income $200K, then it’s highly implausible that a dollar will have the same buying power in both towns.
    - SamSam
      
      Same buying power. What about that is so massively complicated that nobody can comprehend it?
      
      Because it’s simply an impossible scenario. It doesn’t match anyone’s experience of reality, so it doesn’t matter how many times you say “equivalent buying power,” that phrase won’t mean anything once they think about actual $25k-towns and $200k-towns. Reality trumps your hypothetical scenario in people’s heads.
      
      It’s like asking “Would you prefer to live in a house that’s completely filled with trash and squalor, or a house that is always clean, assuming both of them are equally clean?”
      
      Yeah, it’s a theoretical scenario. But the fact that everybody interprets it to mean that decreased relative income is worse than decreased absolute income betrays a strong prejudice in financial judgment.
      
      Once you accept that people are going to be thinking about realistic buying power in your scenario, then the response makes perfect sense. You’re saying that they’d prefer the decreased “absolute income,” but who says it’s really a decreased absolute income? It’s a decreased income in dollars, sure, but an increased income in square feet of house, movie tickets, restaurants, gym memberships and everything else.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      So you’re saying that people are poor because they’re incapable of abstract thinking?
    - knappa
      
      It kinda makes you doubt the results of any survey based on that question, doesn’t it?
    - bbonyx
      
      I’m scrolling down this thread and giggling at every one of your repetitions. I believe we have found the reason the poor stay poor, no one seems capable of simple “given” logic variables and reason… or perhaps they just can’t read.
    - Bass
      
      Yup. Those who don’t get it have the minds made up already. They only need to read a few “trigger” sentences or words and BOOM! they’re off to the message boards. This might sum up how people are reacting – the problem isn’t me, it’s you.
    - joe blough
      
      Antinous, now i’m wondering if the survey respondents understood that the buying power in both scenarios was equal…
  - Blaze Curry
    
    It’s because people read what they want to read and no more.
liquidcool

Without knowing the specifics of the survey, I will assume that it didn’t occur to participants that these towns could be next to each other. So in their minds, this hypothetical town might as well be an isolated world. When that is the case, your relative income in that society changes your standing/perception as a provider. If you are seeking a mate or raising a family in this world, you would surely be impacted. As I once read, America has an aristocracy of success.
daengbo

That’s the wrong interpretation. It’s about quality of life. $100K in New York or Tokyo leaves you poorer than 50K in Bolivia. Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) exists for a reason.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  For the fifth time, what part of ‘equivalent buying power of a dollar’ is so extraordinarily arcane that nobody is able to comprehend it?
  
  Apparently, people are poor because almost nobody can read simple English with comprehension.
  - extra88
    
    I also didn’t understand what you meant by ’equivalent buying power of a dollar,’ that’s not a phrase I’m familiar with. If you had said the cost of living was the same in the two hypothetical towns, I would have understood that.
    
    But I can also understand people not being able to accept such an impossible scenario. They can’t help but think about how much more expensive real estate would be in the $200K town.
    
    There are also other motivations for why someone would choose the $50K in the survey. Perhaps some chose not to be relatively wealthy but to not be relatively poor, imagining being looked down upon. Perhaps they, unlike many economists, they understand the concept of “enough” and don’t like the idea of living in a town full of rich assholes.
junkzero

You probably couldn’t afford to live in the $200k average town on an income of $100k.
So yeah, $50k it is for me too.
Anon_Mahna

“A few years ago, I read a book that cited a survey asking people if they
would rather (assuming equivalent buying power of a dollar) make $50K
annually in a town with an average income of $25K, or make $100K in a
town with an average income of $200K. Turns out that being richer than
the neighbors is more important than actual wealth.”

I get hung up on questions like this. I always need to know more info. such as “are the towns the exact same else wise?” I as well as others (I’m guessing I’m not alone in this) read a question and see it lacking in detail/perspective (if that makes sense) to make a choice.

superfluous side note: I’d go with 100k, figuring 50k to live on (doing fairly so-so currently at 28-30ish right now), 25k to save, 25k to give to charities & such.. assuming equal towns else wise.
Mister44

re: “Turns out that being richer than the neighbors is more important than actual wealth.”

By “equivalent buying power of a dollar”, do you mean that in both areas housing, food, and other costs are the same? (Even if this is the case for the hypothetical question, it defies what takes place in the real world.)

Otherwise, anyone thinking about it would realize your cost of living would be much MUCH less in an area where most people made $25K vs $200K. My old house that cost $70K would sell for at least $250K in parts of CA. $50K would go a lot further in Manhattan, KS than downtown Manhattan, NY.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  By “equivalent buying power of a dollar”, do you mean that in both areas housing, food, and other costs are the same?
  
  Can you think of another interpretation? Food costs the same. Comparable houses have the same square foot costs. All other things being equal, respondents preferred relative wealth over absolute wealth.
  - Mister44
    
    Just making sure I’m on the same page.
    
    I still contend there is no place like this. If you are making 1/2 of what everyone around you is making, eventually your cost of living is going to go up, and vise versa.
    - Donald Petersen
      
      I still contend there is no place like this. If you are making 1/2 of what everyone around you is making, eventually your cost of living is going to go up, and vise versa.
      
      Let me paint you a picture of my neighborhood in the northwest corner of Pasadena. My 1600 square foot Craftsman home, built in 1909, is the most expensive home on my street by far. Most of my neighbors are working-class joes whose homes are worth around $300k, and if they’ve lived there more than 8 years or so, their homes were worth under $200k when they bought them. (My neighbor across the street lives in the same house he was born in back in 1927, so I guess his mortgage is paid off by now.) If you walk down the block, past the high school, and under the freeway overpass to where the houses overlook the Rose Bowl, you have homes of the same size and age which sell for over $800k. The cars in my neighborhood are mostly old Toyotas and Fords. The driveways over on Arroyo Blvd there generally hold BMWs and Audis and the odd Mercedes.
      
      And yet we buy our gas at the same Chevron, and generally shop at the same Ralphs (though admittedly many of the neighbors on this side of the freeway go to the cheaper Super King instead). Our property taxes are different, but our utilities are the same. We’re represented by the same elected officials. The commutes to downtown, the Westside, and Burbank are identical. But the neighborhoods are still quite different. We bought our house because we liked it best of all the candidates we toured, not because we’d feel like the Lords of the Manor surrounded by lesser neighbors. In fact, we sometimes wish we’d managed to get one of the less-expensive shacks on the other side of the freeway, just so we’d feel a wee bit better about our neighborhood. But you know what? That would be silly. We’d have 80% the house for 120% the money, and our current neighborhood really isn’t all that bad.
      
      I’m inclined to believe the results of the survey as reported by Antinous, but not because I believe I’d respond the same way. Relative wealth isn’t what keeps me from moving off of my blue-collar street into a modest house on a fancier street. It’s the fact that I don’t compare my success or failure to that of my neighbors, and I want to have the most comfortable, spacious, elegant house my money can prudently buy, regardless of the surroundings.
    - Mister44
      
      Oh I don’t doubt the results. I am just trying to make sense of them. Nice post though, thanks.
slab99_99

I think it ties into their expectation of happiness. This is pretty apparent at another site I visit that discusses real estate, architecture, and zoning issues in the Hamptons. There’s a clear animosity between the locals and the summer visitors. The locals are obviously well-off in relation to the average American. They live in an amazing place, their kids go to great schools, etc. Yet they seem so unhappy because they have to put up with rich a$$holes for four months a year.

Sam125

New research suggests it might not be about aspirations—i.e., “Maybe I could be rich someday.” Instead, says the Economist, people are more concerned with how social programs and wealth distribution might help people worse off than them become better off than them.

This is an interesting viewpoint. So the middle class favors making life easier for the rich so the poor won’t possibly end up becoming wealthier than them? I hope no one actually thinks that way because that’s pathetic. It also goes against the very nature of Social Mobility and ends up creating a class-based society.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

There was an anecdote about this in a book I read years ago. It said that by and large, the thing the rich most wanted was to keep the middle from ascending to their level, and the thing the middle most wanted was not simply to ascend but to _trade places_ with the rich, pushing the rich down in favor of themselves. And the thing the poor most wanted was… to know where their next meal was coming from.
Brett Myers

No, it suggests the people near the bottom of the income scale would rather give advantage to those above them and maintain their local status quo, rather than be passed up by their neighbors.

tor_berg

It seems a little odd that the article fails to acknowledge that Americans favor increasing taxes on the wealthy: http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2292/americans-support-higher-taxes-really

gws

Damn it, poor people.

http://twitter.com/chumunculus John

So the goal of progressives should be to convince the poor that the poorest are worthy of help, not to convince them the rich are evil. Make sense?

http://twitter.com/badtux99 Bad Tux

As a native Southerner from a poor family, I can validate that this is why the poor white trash opposed desegregation. “We might be ignorant hillbillies, but at least we’re not n***ers” was the general principle. They willingly elected pro-segregation politicians who deprived them of educational opportunities, who passed labor laws depriving them of all meaningful employment rights, who underinvested in infrastructure for decades, who opposed even providing free textbooks in K-12 so that the white trash could afford to attend school, all in exchange for the right to say they were “better than n***ers”.

Today’s politicians have chosen different targets, but it’s all the same general principle. “We might be white trash living in a trailer house, but at least we aren’t a beaner!” explains a whole lot of the immigrant bashing. Add in the fact that they feel minorities are competing for the same menial jobs that they want, and you have a recipe for voters very willing to vote for politicians opposing their best interests, as long as said politicians keep down some minority group even harder.

http://twitter.com/rossouwn Rossouw Nel

Yeah, this makes me think of South African history. Apartheid laws were a way for the poor white Afrikaners to gain a higher status than black people. They felt inferior to English South Africans so they needed to push another group beneath them. That’s how the National Party won support.
Cowicide

Thank you for you insight, Bad Tux. Great post.

muffler

It’s really about narcissism or insecurity and definitely about small thinking.

me_gusta_mucho

So, and this is an honest question here, do we let the poor dig their own hole?

Brainspore

So, and this is an honest question here, do we let the poor dig their own hole?

Don’t be silly— we don’t LET them dig their own hole. We charge them to dig their own hole while threatening to pull the lease on their shovels.

http://twitter.com/davehardy Dave Hardy

What’s amazing to me is that no one wants 60% of their income taken by the government, much less an increase on that percentage. You worked for that money, right? Why on earth should you give two-thirds of it away because everyone else wants a break (or worse yet, a free ride).

querent

“What’s amazing to me is that no one wants 60% of their income taken by
the government, much less an increase on that percentage. You worked for
that money, right?”

Nobody in the top tax brackets actually earned all the money they made. When you’re making 10^3 times as much as a roughneck who works 50+ hours a week, there is no way you worked hard enough to earn that money.

If you like, tax the corporations. Then there will be less to pay out in bonuses.
mccrum

“You worked for that money, right? Why on earth should you give
two-thirds of it away because everyone else wants a break (or worse yet,
a free ride)”

It’s true, I did work for it. And I took public transit to get there. And used a public road to get to the train. And used clean water from my tap for a shower. And wasn’t robbed in the middle of the night because the police have nice cars and gas to ride around with.

Taxes are the cost of civilization. If my taxes going up 5% means I don’t have to walk past some mom with a cup trying to get change to buy pop tarts for her kids (who can’t afford to go to schools in your ideal world, since, you know, public schools get tax money) that’s cool by me.

Yes, there are people gaming the system on the low end, I’ll totally admit that. I also admit that I think nine guilty guys should walk so we don’t lynch innocent guys. If you take all the money the low end is gaming the system, you might possibly be able to match half of the bonuses given to Wall Street traders who shorted in securities they built to fail.
- lillyd
  
  I wish I could “like” this more than once. Great post!
Donald Petersen

What’s amazing to me is that no one wants 60% of their income taken by the government, much less an increase on that percentage. You worked for that money, right? Why on earth should you give two-thirds of it away because everyone else wants a break (or worse yet, a free ride).

You project a bit, I fear. You may not want any of your money redistributed to the undeserving poor, but some of us aren’t quite so niggardly. The way I see it, one of the things that I would really like to have in my life is a society of well-fed, well-housed, well-educated, and happy neighbors, going far beyond as far as the eye can see. If I have buckets of wealth but I’m surrounded by poverty and misery, just how much can I enjoy my wealth… and how long can I expect to hold on to it before someone gets all revolutionary on my plutocratic ass?

I want to feed and clothe and house and educate my family, and have some bucks left over for some carefree good times. In my part of the world, I could do all that quite well with an income in the low six figures. Anything I make beyond that is largely useless to me. I already have too many cars and all the musical instruments and videogames I care to play. My kids don’t need an embarrassingly fat inheritance to make their way in the world. My wife doesn’t long for stupid things like jewels and furs and useless luxuries… all she ever wants is time and space and peace and quiet, and the opportunity to travel.

Let me make a “modest” $125,000 a year, and I’m fabulously wealthy in my eyes. Everything after that, 100% beyond that point, is money I don’t want or need, that would be better spent on all those hardworking stiffs out there who aren’t as fortunate as I am. Nobody would go for that kind of marginal rate, however, but something pretty profoundly progressive would be a rate I’d support.

But y’know. Every man for himself out there.
- Daneel
  
  How does $125,000pa compare to the median salary in the US?
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Couldn’t tellya. Sounds awfully munificent to me.
  - gellfex
    
    $125k is about 3x median if I recall. I get such chuckles about the folks who say “$250 a year isn’t rich!” Tell that to the guy making $40k.
    - http://www.facebook.com/jason.shankel Jason Shankel
      
      It’s not rich if you live in Manhattan. Comfortable. Upper middle class. But not rich.
    - travtastic
      
      It’s outright poverty if you live on the moon.
    - Donald Petersen
      
      It’s not rich if you live in Manhattan. Comfortable. Upper middle class. But not rich.
      
      No? How about if you live in, say, Park Slope? Or (God helpya) Hoboken? If one could stomach being one of the bridge-n-tunnelers, wouldn’t one have largely the same access to the quality of life afforded by being resident on the Isle of Manhattan itself? If so, actually living in Manhattan seems like it might be a slightly unnecessary luxury. Kinda like saying, “if you own a Maybach on $250k a year, between fuel costs, insurance, car payments, and paying for a driver (not to mention his uniform and dry-cleaning of same), you’re actually just barely squeaking by.”
    - travtastic
      
      Double the median income for your location might as well be rich, as far as most people are concerned.
      
      Median household income for the area is $66,818/yr in 2009 dollars. And that’s for two workers (or really 1.x workers, statistically).
      
      New York County, NY [census.gov]
    - travtastic
      
      Actually, it’s more like 2.5x times the median household income.
jacklaughing

“What’s amazing to me is that no one wants 60% of their income taken by
the government, much less an increase on that percentage. You worked for
that money, right? Why on earth should you give two-thirds of it away
because everyone else wants a break (or worse yet, a free ride).”

Yeah, except that the wealthy make the vast majority of their wealth off investments, not actual earned income, and investments and the interest generated is taxed at a much lower rate than actual income. Further, the wealthy can hire lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, financial planners to maximize their earnings and hide money from being taxed. They can move money to offshore accounts and investments, or operate corporations that are virtually tax-free in today’s tax code. And I defy you to find a person in an upper income tax bracket who works anywhere near as hard or as much as the vast majority of people in the lowest tax brackets. When your income is derived mainly from just moving money around, the work isn’t hard. It might occasionally be stressful, but not hard.

The idea that the wealthy are “job creators” and that they need to be “protected” from taxes is laughable at best, and complete bullsh*t at worst.
- poon hound
  
  What does an investment do? I don’t know, I’m too poor and stupid to figure it out.
http://www.facebook.com/jason.shankel Jason Shankel

So which is it? Is it shamefully irresponsible to leave the national debt to our grandchildren, or is it shamefully irresponsible to pay it ourselves right now?

The cognitive dissonance behind not wanting to kick the can down the road but not tolerating even the slightest increase in taxes (which are at their lowest point in 60 years) is astounding.

Not one..NOT ONE…Republican candidate agreed to accept even a ten to one ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. Not even ten to one.

There is no way, there is NO WAY, to balance the budget with current revenues without drastic cuts to both Medicare and the military, both of which are untouchable.

So we have to make up our minds: do we want an army? Medicine for old people? Or low taxes? Pick any two.
- jtegnell
  
  It’s hardly “do we want an army?” It’s “do we want a wasteful, bloated army that is by far the most expensive army in world history, which is constantly throwing it’s assets away needlessly invading and occupying other countries?”
  
  And yet, of your three choices, that’s the one that’s most untouchable of all somehow.
  - http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell
    
    Most expensive army in the world is such an understatement. This is from 2010 and we’ve only *increased* military spending.
    
    “The eighteen nations with the largest
    military budgets in 2010 are shown in the chart above (click to
    enlarge). The United States, with a budget of $698 billion, spends more
    on defense than the next seventeen nations combined. The United States military spending is almost six times that of the next biggest spender, China ($119 billion) and more than eleven times that of Russia ($59 billion).”
    
    http://www.rickety.us/2011/06/2010-defense-spending-by-country/
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Sanders/100000011989161 Robert Sanders
      
      Yeah, there was a chapter in “Sun Tzu and Art of War” where Sun Tzu explained that a cart of the enemies supplies were worth 20 of yours, since you will use up 19 of yours to deliver 1 to the field! He also explained that protracted wars are to be avoided because it will only impoverish your nation and it’s people! This is so elementary that a small child can understand it, but this country refuses to leave long and costly engagements alone while we keep bleeding money like stuck pigs.
Lukas Mickiewicz

No one is being taxed in this country at 60%, and the US has some of the lowest personal taxes in the entire industrialized world.
http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell

Yeah, people who use social welfare/aid programs are all just a bunch of lazy bums living large on the tax-payers dime.
dollared

Um, because the government does things (roads,national defense,education, laws, court systems, prisons, environmental protection, disaster response, securities regulation, criminal arrest and prosecution, food and drug safety), that benefit all residents, that make it possible to have an efficient, complex, peaceful society where earned income can be invested and protected from thieves, and those things cost money? So we do what every society has done since Egypt, which is tax the citizens so that those collective actions can be accomplished? And who benefits more from education, roads, defense, court systems, securities regulation, than the rich?

And no one in the US pays 2/3. No one does, and no one has since Reagan was president, and that person was a complete idiot who didn’t know what a deduction was. And no one will will pay 2.3 under any plan put forward. And anyone who suggests otherwise is a liar.

poon hound

I’m more curious as to why rich liberals refuse to voluntarily pay more taxes when they constantly complain that their tax rates are too low.

Actually, I’m not that curious, as I know the answer. Its because Sean Penn, Matt Damon, Michael Moore and the rest are greedy, self-interested and have no desire to live modestly when they can live like royalty off of what they earn.

dragonfrog

Cough*warrenbuffet*coughcough

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsdebate/52405448-176/buffett-buffalo-tax-news.html.csp
http://twitter.com/Skyhawk1 skyhawk1

Let’s not mix charity with taxes. Charities are optional. If you want to give to a cause then it’s up to the individual to contribute whenever or whatever amount they choose. Taxes are necessary for a civilized society to fund infrastructure, education and other services. Actually read the Constitution.
- twency
  
  Where is education in the Constitution? Not that I’m against education, mind you, even publicly funded education, but I think it’s a stretch to find it in the Constitution. I mean, did you “actually read the Constitution” like you advocated?
http://www.facebook.com/jason.shankel Jason Shankel

Bagger, please. Ad hominem. Even if everyone living in Hollywood, every rich liberal, is a greedy hypocrite you still have ALL YOUR WORK AHEAD OF YOU proving we shouldn’t raise taxes as a matter of decent public policy.

Now, a question for you: why don’t all the conservatives who are so concerned about the national debt and burdening our grandchildren voluntarily surrender all their T-bills? Because they’re hypocrites therefore the national debt is not a real problem.

Also global warming isn’t happening because Al Gore has a big house.
- hab
  
  For the same reason that progressives don’t voluntarily pay higher taxes. This is an argument about what we think that _other_ people should do. This is the difference between socialism and Christianity: Being forced to give to others versus being inspired to give willingly. It is basic human nature to be envious of other’s wealth, as Antinous’ misunderstood scenario illustrates.
  
  Statistically, Republicans give to charity more generously than Democrats give.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Statistically, Republicans give to charity more generously than Democrats give.
    
    I’d be interested to see that expanded to show how much went to churches and how much of the total actually went to anybody who could be reasonably described as ‘in need of charity’.
    - Scurra
      
      Antinous – I know what you mean, but using the word “churches” like that makes it sound like an insult like “liberal” or “progressive”. My church just about breaks even each year because most of its income is spent on community projects. That’s why I’m happy to give money to it – from my point of view I get the best of both worlds: the church and the projects!
      (Then again, I’m a “Christian Socialist” so I may have a different perspective on these things. Also, I’m in the UK and our church scandals are very rarely associated with money…)
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Consider all the evangelical churches whose ministry consists of cheesy cable television programs begging for cash. Are they included in those statistics? Because that ain’t charity.
- twency
  
  “why don’t all the conservatives who are so concerned about the national debt and burdening our grandchildren voluntarily surrender all their T-bills?”
  
  I’m generally conservative, I’m concerned about the aforementioned issues, and I have no T-bills. Next question?
MythicalMe

I’m glad that you can speak for those whom you disparage.

The fact is that this is not a liberal v. conservative issue. The issue is that of class. The wealthy want more wealth are not happy when the government speaks of taking more of said wealth. When the government talks about increasing corporate taxes it means that profits could be less, though more often it means higher prices to low and middle classes, so the rich are opposed to raising taxes.

Trickle-down economics failed because the wealthy didn’t pass on the increased tax savings. Instead they used it to increase their net worth.
http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell

What a strange take. You do realize that all of the people you just mentioned give quite a bit to charity, which is far more effective than giving extra taxes.

http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

Rich people have billions to spend on media, TV networks, etc. convincing people to act against their own self-interest.

me_gusta_mucho

I say let them spend their money. They can’t convince all of the people all of the time.
- mccrum
  
  No, just enough, which they seem to be doing really, really well for the past thirty years.
Guest

removal?

JohnnySmith0

It’s because they’re masochists… they want to feel poor while somebody else is rich.

Some people feel overbearing pride and glee in being poor… It’s like how most religions encourage suffering in some sort of noble poverty.

Donald Petersen

Some people feel overbearing pride and glee in being poor…

I know a lot of poor people. Grew up around a lot of ‘em, too. Never yet met one who wanted to be poor. Never met one who was even remotely gleeful about it. I knew plenty who were proud of their efforts to overcome their poverty, but I can’t think of any who reveled in the poverty itself.

You must know some crazy, crazy people.
- http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell
  
  Oh come on man, they *like* it so who are we to try and help them out?
  
  More seriously, I have to imagine that Alphabet was either being very sarcastic or that alphabet simply has never actually spent much time with poor people.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Edit: Thanks for fixing.
    - http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell
      
      Sorry, I simply misread who was posting, my bad!
    - Donald Petersen
      
      No problem. Thanks for fixing it.
http://twitter.com/djshiva DJ Shiva

Yeah, I’m sure poor people would love to throw a party to celebrate their “overbearing pride and glee in being poor”, except they can’t afford it.
http://twitter.com/enkiv2 John Ohno

Thank you for bringing slavmoral into the conversation. I don’t think this is in of itself some kind of inherent drive — I suspect that it’s a cultural thing that is nonetheless present in any culture that has an elite, because it’s simple and benefits the elite more the more the elite screw everyone else over (there’s a good formulation of this attitude in a song from the 90s… “the more you suffer, the more you show you really care”; translated into our context here, the more you get screwed over by The Man the more you fall into the right morally).

http://twitter.com/spylark hapa

ugh the economist.

“In keeping with the notion of “last-place aversion”, the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the “rich” but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves.”
a draft of the paper: http://www.princeton.edu/~kuziemko/lpa_draft.pdf

so this “most likely to give the money to the person above them,” what did it amount to?

55% GAVE DOWNWARD.

at the other end, the people at the TOP chose 85% of time to keep the 2nd place people from winning.

robcat2075

Is this anything like the “Stockholm Syndrome” where hostages supposedly sympathize with their captors?

John Stephens

Not so much sympathize with their captors, as hate and fear their supposed rescuers. Many of the poor you claim to care about so much hold conservative social values, which give their lives meaning beyond material goods. The so-called ‘progressives’ heap insults and abuse upon them, and then claim to want to better their lives. How many of the replies in this thread are variations on “Damn these cousin-humping rednecks! Why don’t they do what we tell them to, don’t they understand we’re SMARTER than they are?” And this is supposed to gain their trust and cooperation? Really, who are the stupid people here?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Demetria-Williams-Parks/536946740 Demetria Williams Parks

very useful information.

http://www.facebook.com/kkisser Keith Kisser

So the goal of progressives should be to convince the poor that the
poorest are worthy of help, not to convince them the rich are evil.

Except that the rich have convinced most middle class and poor Americans that this attitude is the Evil Sin of Socialism, despite it being considered both a foundational principal of the country and a basic tenant of Christianity, whom most of them profess to practice.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Demetria-Williams-Parks/536946740 Demetria Williams Parks

if you think about the history of this country and how 2nd class groups have often mistreated eachother instead of working together, the results of this study don’t seem too hard to believe.

IronyElemental

So, they’re not delusional optimists; instead, they’re vengeful pricks. Got it.

Zachary Sarver

Y’know. We, as a species, are pretty messed up.

Daneel

“But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet —–!”

DocScience

You progressives are quite funny when you think there’s no one else looking.

Donald Petersen

Hell, we’re funny when we know there’s an audience, too.
Daneel

I find it funny that people believe that they can use words like progressive or liberal as an insult. Does that count?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Peter-Dickson/1280707658 Peter Dickson

I am mildly interested in why people let tax breaks for the wealthy exist. Apparently, it is human nature, too bad.

grimc

It’s the Crab Bucket Effect. Ever see a bucket full of live crabs? Whenever one tries to climb out, another pulls it back down.

http://profiles.google.com/chudez Ted Bautista

yup! we filipinos call this “crab metality” and it’s a symptom of crab mentality that i find it vaguely reassuring that we’re not the only ones who practice it.
Modusoperandi

grimc “It’s the Crab Bucket Effect. Ever see a bucket full of live crabs?”
Did they earn that bucket, or did bleeding-heart liberals steal it from richer, hard-workinger crabs and just give it to them?
Crab buckets are SOCIALISM!!!

gwailo_joe

Barrel of crabs my friends. A barrel of scared, scrabbling crabs. Every one trying to escape its fate, but only too happy to pull down a nimbler neighbor.

“The poor will always be with us”. Remember that famous line? A convenient excuse for generations of statesmen, religious leaders and rich folks as to the desperate inequality that pervades the living world.

But just because we live in a world where every human -could- receive shelter, food, medical care and education has little bearing on the reality that thousands of years of recorded human history and the current modern moral way of thinking pretty much guarantees that it will never happen.

Because that is not how the game is played. All men are NOT created equal. ’You don’t work, you don’t eat’ was oft the way it used to be (and still is in plenty of places)…It’s harsh. It’s decidedly unfair. It’s often cruel and inhumane.

But if you give that guy over there an apartment and enough food to feed his family for doing NOTHING, why in the bleeding hell should I be busting my hump in this Wack-Donalds/coal mine/slaughterhouse for subsistence wages?!?! FUCK THAT!!! I’m going to go take a nap instead and I’ll expect a check when I wake up!!

Yes: the US in regards to the acceptance of hoarding of extreme wealth is on the wrong path. If we hope to aspire to the lofty rhetoric of being ‘kinder, gentler, civilized and free’; we need to invest in all our people: and the mega rich need to step the fuck up. But imho the rhetoric is mostly bullshit, has been for a long time: our national character is mostly predicated on getting yours and screw those sorry chumps that get in the way.

Of any place, in any time in history, in living memory: America had (still has maybe) the chance to elevate an entire people to heights of prosperity never before imagined. But instead, alas, the law of the jungle still applies…

http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell

”But imho the rhetoric is mostly bullshit, has been for a long time: our
national character is mostly predicated on getting yours and screw those
sorry chumps that get in the way.”

That pretty much capitalism in a nut shell.

http://lectiblog.blogspot.com/ lecti

So basically these people lack the proper perspective. And I thought they were just stupid…wait, I guess that didn’t change my opinion.

aresnick

John Steinbeck said:

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Gulliver

How to build an economically viable tax system in five simple steps:

1) Eliminate ALL tax code loopholes.

2) Implement a negative income tax below the basic cost of living.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

3) Implement a flat tax above the basic cost of living.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax

4) If more government revenue is needed, implement a national sales tax.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_tax

5) Eliminate the legal fiction that corporations are persons, along with corporate income tax (a euphemism for a hidden sales tax which just gets passed along to consumers) and focus on taxing the actual persons that run/work for corporations.

Daneel

And on the subject of balancing the budget…

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/
- Gulliver
  
  That thing is awesome. Marketplace has long been my favorite NPR segment.
SeamusAndrewMurphy

#5 “…hidden sales tax which just gets passed along to the consumers” is a weak argument. What’s implied is that all consumers suffer from a corporation’s tax burden. The reality is that only the corporation’s specific customers pay the pass through tax, and really who else should pay it? If you don’t tax corporate earnings, then the public costs (road, rail, mail, infrastructure, policing, national/international defense, etc.) incurred by by the corporate entity are socialized across the broad swath of taxpayers.

If I don’t buy Prince tennis rackets, Callaway golf balls, or General Motors automobiles, why am I forced to pay their share of public costs? Their customers are absolutely the correct people to pay that bill.
- Gulliver
  
  If you don’t tax corporate earnings, then the public costs (road, rail, mail, infrastructure, policing, national/international defense, etc.) incurred by by the corporate entity are socialized across the broad swath of taxpayers.
  
  Everyone uses those resources. If a resource is used only by a corporate entity, it should pay for it out of its own coffers, not the tax payers. As for the resources they and tax payers use in common, that is why the actual persons who run the corporations should be taxed on their earnings, because right now they’re passing that along to their customers. Corporations are not persons and they are not citizens. They are a group of people, and those people deserve no special protection or treatment from any others. Government subsidized monopolies that use lobby influence to eliminate competition are among the most vile institutions in my country.
  
  If I don’t buy Prince tennis rackets, Callaway golf balls, or General Motors automobiles, why am I forced to pay their share of public costs? Their customers are absolutely the correct people to pay that bill.
  
  I agree. That’s why I advocated replacing that hidden tax with a national sales tax, to bring it out into the open.
Stacy McKenna Seip

I was with you right up until #5. Taxing corporations the same way you do individuals is how you accomplish #1.
- Gulliver
  
  I was with you right up until #5. Taxing corporations the same way you do individuals is how you accomplish #1.
  
  Well, I did put them in what, in my opinion, is their order of importance, at least in terms of equitable taxation. Hopefully you don’t have to take it as an all-or-nothing proposal :)
  
  As it stands, large corporations are much better positioned to dodge corporate income tax than are small businesses, so small business owners end up having their revenues taxed twice, which in turn affects the wages they can afford to pay their employees and the prices they can afford to charge their customers. Even if large corporations were unable to shelter their gross earnings from the taxman, economies of scale and global trade enable them to undercut their smaller competitors. Hence the Wal-Mart effect. If, instead of corporate income tax, we relied on a national sales tax (sometimes called a Fair Tax), it would work toward correcting that imbalance. It would also make their real prices more transparent, removing much of the incentive for customers to choose them over locally owned and operated competitors. For this reason I submit that a national sales tax is both more transparent and more sustainable than an opaque corporate income tax that large companies pass on to their customers anyway and which favors big business over small.
  
  Likewise, if we eliminate all the loopholes wealthy business owners use to shelter their personal income by levying a flat tax on all their earnings regardless of how they pay themselves, they will be unable to hide behind corporate accountants.
  
  Whether or not you agree with #5, thank you for your reply, Stacy. While I’m not holding my breath, perhaps there is some chance the United States can get off the ideological bandwagons driving both the Left and Right establishments further away from pragmatic discussion. Otherwise I fear future generations may inherit economic woes to rival the ecological damage they stand to reap.
  - Stacy McKenna Seip
    
    I totally agree with your prioritization!
    
    Aren’t tax dodges doable because of loopholes? Sure, even if we taxed gross income, bigger corps would have fancier accountants to “disguise” their receipts, but how far can you take that? Receipts are receipts… Advantages of international outsourcing and the like are going to be problematic no matter what – I’m not seeing how a national sales tax would help counter that.
    
    My biggest issue with a national sales tax is that it doesn’t allow for a minimum income tax cap – our current income tax structure allows those below poverty a pass on paying income tax. A national sales tax couldn’t do that – you can’t tell at the register if the purchaser is eligible for an exemption. Taxing the income side is much easier for allowing a minimum tax cap.
    
    I yearn for the day political discussion comes back towards pragmatism…
    
    ETA: Just Googled “Fair Tax”. Interesting proposal, but I disagree with the plan to exempt taxes on wholesale (intermediary) purchases, and exempt taxing investment. I also haven’t found anything that defines what happens when someone hires a chef/chauffeur/personal assistant/maid or even contracts a plumber/contractor – are those services/payroll taxed like their TV and new car purchases? Since so little of the uber-wealthy income is spent on retail purchases, the idea of the Fair Tax keeping them in the 23% tax bracket seems optimistic to me.

Rayonic

While this study shows an interesting social phenomenon, poor people who oppose higher taxes on the rich probably do so out of a simple sense of fairness. i.e. wealth != guilt, so targeting the rich with higher taxes can seem like undue punishment.

Clearly most people are fine with taxes being on some sort of curve, but you can’t talk about raising taxes on the high end without people dragging in class warfare/eat-the-rich rhetoric. (For proof, scroll up or down.)

BTW, I’m sure there’s a million interesting factoids about how rich people pay no taxes and how corporate taxes come directly out of CEO paychecks, but I’m just speculating how that segment of the public feels.

Cowicide

I don’t buy it completely. I’m sure some may subconsciously think that… but…

I listen to poor people call into rightwing radio stations all the time who’ve been convinced (by that very same rightwing media) to believe that the solidly disproven trickle-down theory will actually work for them. And, massive tax breaks for the rich create more jobs than otherwise (also soundly disproven).

It’s pounded into their heads constantly by rightwing corporatist radio, FOX News and other mainstream media using corporatist/libertarian “think tank” FUD studies as “back up”. Over and over… and over… It’s really drilled into their skulls and it really works wonders on their brains.

Note: I listen to rightwing radio so you don’t have to. But, if you don’t believe me, try it yourself for a while (see warning below).

Warning: Listening to rightwing radio can be toxic even if you don’t believe (and act upon) the FUD they spew. I usually have to listen to the Melvins (Song: A History Of Bad Men – Album: A Senile Animal) for a bit afterwards, then listen/watch/read Democracy Now! and Counterspin on FAIR.org for a while afterwards for a chaser. Otherwise, it eats at your brain and nerves after a while… (all… that… dumb… and half-truths… outright lies… ugh…).

I have to admit it’s fun (sometimes) when rightwing radio gives me cognitive dissonance. It’s usually when they temporarily suspend obtuse half-truths. Lately, it’s been legalizing (or decriminalizing) pot for some of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oolwsWexSzQ

snowmentality

My husband listens to rightwing radio sometimes in the same way you do. He just feels like he needs to know what kind of crap they’re saying, and he can laugh at it when it gets beyond ridiculous. I can’t do it; the lies and hate, and people swallowing all of them, are just way too toxic for me. I’ll let y’all listen to it so I don’t have to.
- Cowicide
  
  I’ll let y’all listen to it so I don’t have to.
  
  Well, I get paid by the Tides Foundation to monitor them so we can subvert their freedoms. Glenn Beck almost got us when he inspired that killer to come take us out, but we narrowly escaped. ;D
  
  Yeah, it really is a very negative, toxic experience and even when I’m laughing at the absolutely obtuse crap they say… it’s still not enjoyable in the end (but that’s not why I listen, of course).
  
  Fortunately, I’ve fulfilled most of my mission (research) having listened to their inane drivel for so long and been giving myself a break from it and only monitor their rancid distortions on occasion.
  
  It’s really frightening how they tie it all together with local radio personalities, gather the trust and affection of the listeners while feeding them half-truth corporatist agendas all the while. It’s straight out of The Matrix. They are to FUD what Steve Jobs is to iPads.
  
  I find that for the most part, they don’t outright lie… they just constantly feed half the story, half the information…. they’ve mastered the power of disseminating half-truths as facts. If I wasn’t a critical thinker with the ability to track reliable sources over the years, etc. – it’d probably rub off on me as well. The same companies that literally pollute our environment fund this toxic sludge over the airwaves.
  
  It’s literally helping to destroy our country. I wish more people understood the power of these FUD dissemination machines. But, it’s hard to fight… corporatists typically don’t fund radio that tells the full truth… because it would tell the full truth on them.
  
  I have my reasons for this research, but my project probably won’t be revealed for another 3 years or so. But when I do, I’ll be sure to post it on Boing Boing first. (Oh, and batshit crazy rightwingers? I’m not nuts like you, so please don’t misconstrue this as some kind of threat… I believe in peaceful resistance because it’s the only kind that lasts and truly changes things for the better.)

Teller

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a Hummer for?”
- Sid Browning

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EEMBEZWHDPEKERFVN5G6QAJAFY jeb

If we were allowed to expand on this It might help explain some of the bizarre behavior we experienced in Illinois during 2009. A woman named Rosanna Pulido led a minuteman campaign against illegal immigrants . Like GoProud this made no sense to me.

I’m linking to Jim Newell: http://wonkette.com/407392/anonymous-racist-freeper-is-actually-republican-candidate-to-replace-rahm

twency

“A woman named Rosanna Pulido led a minuteman campaign against illegal immigrants . Like GoProud this made no sense to me.”

Why, was she an illegal immigrant?

Atrum

I think I need to go into a corner and discreetly throw up now.

oldtaku

It’s like this with racism too. The progressive dilemma. The downtrodden groups you sympathize the most with are inevitably some of the most racist, sexist, conservative, etc people around when it comes to other groups in similar positions.

BrotherPower

Rich people and dumb people, working together, can accomplish anything rich people put their minds to.

http://twitter.com/ohfuckinreally awhellno

Poor people are less intelligent on average. Thus they are more likely to support policies not in their favor.

Jesse Ewles

So perhaps the way forward is remind the collapsing North American middle class that they are a 1000x better off than 90% of people of earth, most living on a dollar a day?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Vincent-Maldia/100001023048460 Vincent Maldia

someone should be listing down all the bugs like this in human psychology so we know what to fix when genetic engineering is advanced enough

abstract_reg

And here I was thinking that it was because most people are stupid.

Oh… wait.

BarBarSeven

Also, easy credit for anyone nowadays gives everyone the fuel to feed their delusions. Don’t have a job but need money to live? No problem! Max out your credit card and then one day your boat will come in and you’ll not only be able to pay off your debt but live out your dreams!

Credit—and the way it’s misused in the Western world—is seriously evil.

hab

Credit makes the poor modern-day indentured servants while they unwittingly try to imitate the vacuous materialistic lifestyles of the supposed upper classes. Usury lending preys on the poor and keeps them poor by taking advantage of their envy and pride.

mikey p

Somehow the Economist article (mostly in the second half, but still), and the discussion here, jump back and forth between ‘Americans’ and ‘people’ like the two words are synonyms.

Perhaps people everywhere do prefer being better-off than someone else to being better-off in absolute terms. Why would this play out so strongly in America though, compared to countries with more consistent progressive taxation? There needs to be a more local explanation than just some supposed facet of human nature, otherwise it’d be the same everywhere.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SOPDG6LNDZ7YKSONV2RFNIIRIE RobertJ

This is bullshit. Wanna hear a fucked up story? I ran up $65000 in student loans for 4 years at an Ivy League college. My parents made about ~$100k a year which disqualified me for most financial aid. I still had scholarships and a couple grants but I was still shelling out $15-20k a year in private and Stafford loans to finance my education. Now, you might think that because my parents were making $100k they could have provided well for my education, but what the federal aid program doesn’t take into account was that my parents are deadbeats and over $500k in credit card and business debt. They can barely put food on the table to feed themselves much less provide for me. At the same time, a kid from the Bronx or South Boston will qualify to have his tuition and living expenses completely paid for and graduate with little or no debt. Tell me, how is it fair that that kid gets a free ride while I am forced to repay $65k in loans -oh and more on the way because I am starting graduate school this year which means more $$$? It isn’t fair. And this is but one case of many where people are able to benefit from a system where the government redistributes the wealth in society. Wake up people! I think Grover Norquist said it best, “I don’t want the government to disappear, I just want to shrink the government to a level where I can drown it in a bathtub.”

BarBarSeven

Are you being sarcastic? If your post is performance art it still is boring.
http://lectiblog.blogspot.com/ lecti

To that I have to say, did you REALLY need to get into Ivy League school if you can’t afford to pay the loans in the future? There are other schools with pretty good ROI, you know. And if you wanted to go further, grad schools pay you to be there (on slave wages, of course).

I understand it’s too late, but if you have to owe to get something, it’s likely to be unaffordable.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SOPDG6LNDZ7YKSONV2RFNIIRIE RobertJ
  
  In a manner of speaking, yes, I did have to go to an Ivy League school because that is where the top brokerages and hedge funds do their recruiting. Also the alumni network is key when it comes to getting an interview at Goldman Sachs or a top performing hedge fund. When I graduate with my MPA next year I will owe over $100k in student loans. That works out to about $1200 a month on a 25 year repayment plan. My starting salary will be in the $80k range with bonus options of $15,30, and 50k depending on performance. Now that sounds like a lot of money to most people but consider this: New York State Income Tax 10%, City Tax ~5%, social security and medicare 7.2%, federal income tax ~20%. That is nearly half my income. Lets say I do really well and get the $50k bonus. I will take home about $75k. Now subtract my $14400 in student loan payments I am down to $60k. Rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in the Village: $2300/mo. Utilities: $150/mo. Food: $900/mo. Subway: $80/mo. Nice clothes I need for my job: $5000/yr. Booze I need to not go insane from working 100+ hour weeks: $1000/mo. You can see that the price I am paying just so that poor schmuck from the Bronx gets to go to school for free yet I have to bust my ass? And this only works because I will have a good job and if I get the $50k bonus. Imagine how it is for some of my friends who did not study finance and are working as a bartender or barista with $80k in loans.
  - http://lectiblog.blogspot.com/ lecti
    
    No, 80k salary is not a lot of money, at least for me. And guess what? I never owed.
    
    No, you didn’t have to go into finance to have a decent life. And I still think you are a schmuck for calling your parents a deadbeat in public. Jesus, no wonder this country is in the crappers with people like these in finance…
    - BarBarSeven
      
      Lecti, do you think this guy is for real? Why would someone in his position and his salary be on BoingBoing posting something like this?
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SOPDG6LNDZ7YKSONV2RFNIIRIE RobertJ
      
      I’m not making any money right now. And you would be surprised how many of us quants are on BoingBoing. :) As far as calling my parents deadbeats, I think that is a fair description. My Dad is a heroin addict and my mother suffers from borderline personality disorder. Growing up in my house was hell. All my life I wished I had “normal” parents but instead I got introverted xenophobes who blamed everyone else, especially black people, for their fuckups in their own lives. They were the sort of people who would “give two dollars to the person above them”. Everything I have achieved in my life, which is actually quite a lot considering the mitigating factors, was through my own efforts. Because of this a loathe those who were given the option to coast through life without sacrifice. Rich fucks who did shit in school but “lived the life” because their parents were rich and people who got into my school and were given everything courtesy of the US taxpayer (me, my taxes will finance the next generation of these ingrates). Despite all the things going against me, I succeeded in spite of them. Capitalism is the most fair system in the world because it rewards those who have the drive and ambition to succeed and for those who don’t, you get out what you put in. Its the same in the animal kingdom and natural selection. It is how the human race advances and is a law of nature. When you go against nature, everybody suffers.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      When you go against nature, everybody suffers.
      
      Did you want to mention what comedy club you’re at this week?
    - http://lectiblog.blogspot.com/ lecti
      
      “It is how the human race advances and is a law of nature.”
      Oh great. A finance major giving a scientist a lesson on laws of nature.
      
      “As far as calling my parents deadbeats, I think that is a fair description.”
      This is just sad. Well, I don’t want to give you a fair description because I’m afraid Antinous will kick me off the site. See ya!
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SOPDG6LNDZ7YKSONV2RFNIIRIE RobertJ
      
      I can see you want to label me as some horrible person but I assure you, I am not. I have done humanitarian work in Niger, teaching people there how to grow sustainable crops and sell the extra food they grow at market. I have taught math to kids with learning disabilities. I have even done work for the UN reducing fraud in programs that are supposed to protect women from violence and abuse in seedy parts of the world. You can think what you want of me, but it don’t phase me a bit. I just smile and nod at your comments.
    - Michael Cohn
      
      ” but it don’t phase me a bit”
      
      Please tell me you didn’t really major in English, and you didn’t really teach anything to anyone.
    - Mister44
      
      Yes, because casual conversation on an internet forum is where one shows off their English and grammar skills. o_0
    - BarBarSeven
      
      There is no way this “RobertJ” is real. I bet his next line is to confess he was born a poor black child and how he’s now bankrupt with only his Thermos & paperclip to comfort him. Why I think his name is Johnson, Navin Johnson.
      
      *zip* *PING* *pow*
      
      SOMEONE HATES THESE CANS!
    - http://lectiblog.blogspot.com/ lecti
      
      :D
    - atimoshenko
      
      Capitalism is the most fair system in the world because it rewards those who have the drive and ambition to succeed and for those who don’t, you get out what you put in.
      
      Actually, it rewards those with drive, ambition, and access to capital – if you have a lot of toys, you do not really need much drive and hard work to extract utility from them. You reference this yourself when you talk about the rich fucks who got into [your] school.
      
      As a result, there aren’t any capitalist countries currently in existence because the chief mechanism for the transfer of capital – inheritance – has all of jackshit to do with market forces.
    - http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell
      
      Once again someone makes the patently ridiculous assumption that poor people are poor because they are simply too lazy to be rich.
      
      Like others here, I have to wonder if this is satire.
    - Michael Cohn
      
      Based on your inability to reason coherently, I would opine that the money you spent on college was a complete waste of resources. You have achieved *nothing* except to become a complete douche with a horrible sense of entitlement.
  - Steve Pan
    
    Hey genius harvard et. al scholarships are private so stop bitching about your own poor choices in life. If you wanted a merit scholarship you should’ve bootstraped yourself to one and if you wanted a poverty “handout” you should’ve gone to a smaller or public institution and declared yourself an independent.
  - Stacy McKenna Seip
    
    Sounds like you just flat out chose poorly when choosing a profession, then. If financial gain was your goal with that career, and this is your level of decision-making when given the numbers you’ve listed, I wouldn’t want you in charge of my investment funds…
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Ooh! Ooh! I want a chance to help ease Poor Nephew Pennybags’ pain. I think he’s perfectly real. I’ve met folks like him before.
    
    In a manner of speaking, yes, I did have to go to an Ivy League school because that is where the top brokerages and hedge funds do their recruiting. Also the alumni network is key when it comes to getting an interview at Goldman Sachs or a top performing hedge fund.
    
    I suspect, Mr J, that since you seem to be intent on a future in investment banking, you might be familiar with the definition of “investment.” You could have gone to a more affordable school, but since you wanted to maximize your chances of getting hired by a top moneymaking firm, you invested in a top-dollar education. Since you couldn’t afford it outright, and perhaps your scholarships were lacking, you had to finance this investment. No shame in that; many people do.
    
    When I graduate with my MPA next year I will owe over $100k in student loans. That works out to about $1200 a month on a 25 year repayment plan. My starting salary will be in the $80k range with bonus options of $15,30, and 50k depending on performance. Now that sounds like a lot of money to most people
    
    Maybe. Absent the bonus options, you could get a “starting salary” in that range in several fields that don’t demand an Ivy League education. I know plumbers who do better than that. But you’re not in that field for the “starting salary,” are you? Will you really be dumb enough to amortize your $100,000 education over a full 25 years, to the eventual tune of $360,000? And in order for your payments to be $1200/mo for 25 years based on a $100k principal, you’re paying 14% APR, which is close to what you’d be paying if you’d financed your education with a MasterCard. Are college loans really so usurious these days? Could have sworn Stafford loans were still fixed at no more than 6.8%. And that would bring your monthly payment below $700. But maybe you meant your loans were closer to $172k rather than $100k. Hey, you’re the finance major. I just have a high school diploma.
    
    But I assume that your investment won’t take 25 years to mature. If you’re working for, say Goldman Sachs, isn’t the idea that you’ll be making the mid- to high-six figures fairly soon? Like, within the first twenty-four months? In reality, won’t you actually pay off your college debt in a short couple of years? I mean, really… why waste money on that monthly interest if you can just wipe out the college debt as soon as possible? You might have to drive your M5 for another couple of years before you get a new one, but mightn’t that not be the more prudent way forward?
    
    but consider this: New York State Income Tax 10%, City Tax ~5%, social security and medicare 7.2%, federal income tax ~20%.
    That is nearly half my income.
    
    It’s not so bad as that. If you grossed $130k (your $80k starting salary plus your $50k bonus), then your state tax liability is only 6.85%. Your city tax is 5.8%, and your FICA taxes come to 6.4%. (I’m not using this year’s temporary reduction in the SS tax rate.) And your federal income tax is 21% this year, so you’re paying 40% of your income in taxes. That’s closer to a third than to a half.
    
    Lets say I do really well and get the $50k bonus. I will take home about $75k. Now subtract my $14400 in student loan payments I am down to $60k. Rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in the Village: $2300/mo. Utilities: $150/mo. Food: $900/mo. Subway: $80/mo. Nice clothes I need for my job: $5000/yr. Booze I need to not go insane from working 100+ hour weeks: $1000/mo.
    
    Well, you’re taking home $78k per year, and your student loan payments should be $8340 if you’re $100k in debt. I’m certainly glad I don’t need to drop five grand a year on new work clothes, and if you really need to support a fifty-dollar-a-day booze habit, then you’re really not cut out for this kind of work.
    
    But what the hell, maybe you’re thirsty. And maybe your loan payments are actually what you say they are (due perhaps to the $172k principal mentioned above). After all your expenses above, you still have over ten grand in walkin’ around money, jingling right alongside your twelve grand in beer money. If you’ve already paid for your food, lodging, clothing, utilities, taxes, transportation, debt service, and hooch, and you have over ten grand left over, you’re doing pretty goddamned well for an entry-level kid straight outta college.
    
    You can see that the price I am paying just so that poor schmuck from the Bronx gets to go to school for free yet I have to bust my ass? And this only works because I will have a good job and if I get the $50k bonus. Imagine how it is for some of my friends who did not study finance and are working as a bartender or barista with $80k in loans.
    
    That’s what it’s really all about: not the effort and expense that you have to invest in your future, but the fact that someone else gets help with it that you don’t. You asked how it’s fair that “a kid from the Bronx or South Boston will qualify to have his tuition and living expenses completely paid for and graduate with little or no debt.” One might as well ask how fair it is that such a kid was born into the Bronx or South Boston family he comes from in the first place. Did you happen to earn the $100k a year that your deadbeat parents make? Nope, you just fell outta their gonads and grew up in that household. And how did you get into your Ivy school? Did you bust ass academically, or buy your way in? How about those pesky poor kids littering the hallways of your school? Were they legacied in, you suppose, or did they bust ass academically as well, possibly under even direr circumstances than your own? Well, who’s to say? Maybe the first seventeen years of your life cost somebody a lot more than the first seventeen years of those kids’ lives, and now there’s a cosmic reckoning. I got news forya, bub: nobody said life would be fair, least of all Grover Fucking Norquist.
    
    Check me out, if you will. White, male, and reasonably smart. I got the highest SAT score my high school had ever produced up to that point (’88). But my parents made just enough money to prevent me from receiving most need-based scholarships, and my grades, while solid enough to get me in most places, weren’t stellar enough to land me many merit-based scholarships. Because of medical issues involving my sister, my parents couldn’t afford to assume any extra debt, and I didn’t want to incur much of it myself, so I just ended up going to a local community college for a few years, paid for in cash by a pizza delivery job. I should have gone ahead and assumed the debt, and paid for the USC film school education I wanted. Instead, I just started working in the industry without the degree and without the debt. I still wish I had gone to a real school, but not for a second do I begrudge the “affirmative action” people who took advantage of the scholarships and grants that were unavailable to me. Those kids had it tougher than I did, and did not waste the opportunities they’d discovered. Nobody ever held me back except myself.
    
    Now go make your precious millions, kiss your withered soul goodbye, and stop bitching about the circumstances of other people’s lives which you couldn’t hope to understand.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=607675355 Brent Kirkham
      
      Sigh, “I love it when a pwn comes together.” Thank you Mr Petersen.
  - Mister44
    
    Holy shit – 900/mo for food? I am assuming that is because you constantly eat out.
    
    I am a little impressed with your booze tab, assuming its not just one bottle of scotch. If this was all spent on Natty-Lite, you have my respect and I would like to know what foundation I should donate to for your upcoming liver transplant.
  - Michael Cohn
    
    $ 1000 per month for booze ? hey – AA is free, and you NEED it.
Antinous / Moderator

Are you asking us to feel sorry for you because your parents are well-paid deadbeats and you racked up a lot of debt? You going to an Ivy League college that you can’t afford is no different than somebody buying a boat that they can’t afford. And I’m just sure that you couldn’t turn around at Harvard without tripping over a freeloader from the ghetto.
- BarBarSeven
  
  Do you think the guy is for real? Seems like a detailed attempt at a parody of a whiny brat—that falls a bit flat—and not an actual whiny brat.
  - twency
    
    I think it’s a case of “obvious troll is obvious”.
Modusoperandi

Shorter RobertJ: “I went into debt going to an Ivy League college (unlike poor kids from the Bronx or South Boston, who get their silver spoon handed to them on a silver platter). Woe!”

“I think Grover Norquist said it best, ‘I don’t want the government to disappear, I just want to shrink the government to a level where I can drown it in a bathtub.’”To be fair, Grover is a massive, massive asshole.
http://twitter.com/uricacid W.

you didn’t HAVE to go to an ivy league school…
Haakon IV

Presumably much of that financial aid for less wealthy students comes from the college, not all from the federal government. That aside, I have no trouble with my tax dollars paying for college education for kids from the Bronx or South Boston instead of upper middle class pricks who aspire to Wall Street bonuses and drowning the government in a bathtub.
- extra88
  
  RobertJ is a total fiction but that is correct, no one gets a “free ride” to an Ivy League school on federal grants. Almost all that money comes from endowed financial aid programs that belong to the college or university. If you’re smart and poor, you really want to go to an Ivy because the next couple of tiers down cost just as much but have a lot less financial aid to offer.
Michael Cohn

That is just really too fucking bad for you. I worked my way through college in 3 years, Robert, and came away with a hell of a lot less debt than most people. “You can’t choose your parents” but you sure as hell can be responsible and not whine, little boy.

Leisa McCord

This is close to my unproven theory: people prefer to think of themselves as Haves, and not as Have-Nots. Even if every indicator, every statistic puts them in the middle of Have-Not territory, it’s more pleasant to be full of righteous indignation that the Gubmint wants to take away your Have and give it to someone undeserving.

nosehat

The most recent Tom Tomorrow strip is relevant here.

akicif

Does America really handle income tax so very differently from the rest of the world?

In most countries I know about income tax works progressively, so someone who earns enough to be in the 50% tax bracket, say, doesn’t pay 50% tax on all their income, but only on what they earn above the amount that puts them in that bracket rather than the next one down.

So over here, you pay no tax at all on the first £7.5k, 20% on anything between that and £35k, 40% on anything over £35k and under £150k, and 50% above £150k – so if you are on £151k, you pay 50% tax only on that last thousand, not on the whole lot.

Or is it just that the folk in the top level tax brackets in the US have persuaded the basic rate tax payers that the higher rate (60% was quoted) applies to ALL your earnings once you hit a certain income?

Anna Christa

Maybe at least some of them don’t feel like stealing (even from richer people, even via state officials) is moral.

akicif

Anna – have you read the article and comment thread? Foolish question, I know….

But if you were to actually read the article linked from the post, you’d see that tax doesn’t enter into it (except in so far as the behaviour of the people in the redistribution experiment informs the attitude to taxation)

Why would your “they” who “don’t feel like stealing” give the money to the folk above them rather than to those below? Your model doesn’t fit the facts, and hence should be rejected.

But that wouldn’t give the opportunity to peddle the same old lie…

http://postitbreakup.blogspot.com/ postitbreakup

My theory for “why people support tax breaks for the rich” is that it’s not “last place aversion” OR “someday I’ll be rich and won’t want those taxes then.” It’s faulty over-identification–a result of misplaced empathy, but a testament to the human tendency to care about others, nonetheless.

It’s reasoning like this:

Maybe at least some of them don’t feel like stealing (even from richer people, even via state officials) is moral.

People think, “I have a hard time paying my taxes, and I don’t think it’d be fair for me to pay more… so when the rich complain about taxes, I can relate.”

Or, “I know that personally I try to balance a budget, and I know that it’d be bad if I racked up too much credit card debt, so now that I’m hearing about my government doing that, I don’t like it, and I want the debt repaid right away.”

People relate everything back to themselves; they think, “What would I do in this situation?” and vote from that perspective.

(This is not the same as thinking they’ll one day be rich, and it’s the exact opposite of trying to keep others down–like I said, it actually stems from attempting to treat others the way they’d want to be treated.)

Unfortunately, they don’t consider that the rich aren’t actually like them (as in they aren’t anywhere close to being as hurt by tax increases as the poor), and that the finances of a government aren’t actually like an average person’s personal finances (cutting spending on luxuries is not the same as cutting government programs, but it feels like it is when you’re over-identifying)…. so they vote terribly wrong. And our whole country pays the price.

Wally Ballou

This is not the same as thinking they’ll one day be rich…

I’m a middle class person who is opposed to taxes on “the rich” for two reasons.

First, the track record of the United States’ tax system is that almost without exception, every tax which is designed to “soak the rich” sooner or later gravitates down to soaking the middle class.

Case in point: the original income tax of 1913 which taxed you at 1% unless you made the equivalent of about $400,000 in 2011 dollars.

Case in point: the alternative minimum tax, originally designed to soak the rich loopholers. Now it has to be amended every year lest millions of middle class two-income families get whacked.

Case in point: the estate tax, which may have been intended to sock it to the Buffets and Gateses, but also resulted in my father in law, a veritable Scrooge McDuck of excavation in central New York with five trucks and a dozen employees, finding it was cheaper to sell his business (half of the employees were terminated) rather than paying the taxes to turn it over to his kids.

Second, President Obama has defined the “rich” as starting at $250,000 per year. It won’t take more than a few years of currency debasement to get to the point where a nurse married to an electrician will be averaging that kind of income. So that means I’ll be “rich” and I don’t want my taxes to go up.

And if you truly think a nurse married to an electrician are the rich who deserve to be soaked by the tax system, don’t bother trying to convince me.
- http://postitbreakup.blogspot.com/ postitbreakup
  
  I don’t really see how anything you said applies to anything I said. My post was a broader point offering an alternative hypothesis for “why poor people support tax breaks for the rich.”
  
  If you wanna debate tax law, maybe reply to someone else? But since you replied to me… I guess I’ll just say that I don’t see any problem with setting numbers that we know we’ll adjust later to account for inflation, so the argument that “What we call rich today will be middle-class tomorrow” would be a moot point.

netsharc

Why you put question marks in statements that aren’t really questions?

Paool

Ignoring the rest of the article, “redistribution of wealth” is the most insane idea ever to come out of someones mouth and is so unbelievably un-fuckin-constitutional it’s not even funny. I’m sorry if people don’t like the way money is distributed and what not, but once you let the Govn’t decide how the money SHOULD be split up and ACT on that, then you have lost more rights to your person and your property than most people can FATHOM! It sucks but please don’t give into this class warfare crap!

As for the rest of the article about being better off than your neighbor is none too surprising. If you have children like me its perfectly understandable really. Kid has toy but isn’t playing with it. Other kid grabs it. Kid fights tooth and nail to get it back. It’s that basic primal need to be step ahead of the pack that drives much of what we do.

DouglasLucchetti

I’m sure it complicated, but one reason the working poor and middle class don’t want to see more taxes for the rich is because they feel that by giving the government more money they see the government using that money, regardless of where it gets it from, to create more invasive, complex and paperwork ridden forms of interference at all levels of their lives. Of course everyone wants more money but in the final analysis people realize that money doesn’t buy happiness and the kind of stability and security within the community that is their lot in life and where they feel comfortable. What they don’t want is another permitting agency that stands between them and their access to the local fishing hole, tavern, and barbeque pit.

Chris Fry

Hello All,

This study is like trying to explain a hurricane from observing water going down the bathtub drain. They observed group psychology based on the distribution of small sums of given money, and extrapolated from the results an explanation for the beliefs of the lower middle class concerning wealth distribution. It smacks of reaching.

I have a far more plausible explanation for the beliefs of the working class and lower middle class. These groups of people are more likely to actually be in contact with the poor people to whom the wealth is distributed. As such, they observe the actual result of wealth redistribution. The cashier at Wal-Mart has had a long hard day away from her kids. When she goes home, she will painstakingly prepare them the bone-in $.99/lb chicken she found on special along with some of the generic mac-and-cheese, not Kraft. However, before she does, she has to finish checking out this last customer. The girl and her boyfriend appear to be barely out of their teens. They both seem healthy and able-bodied as they start unloading their overloaded shopping cart. Expensive steak, bagged microwave meals, and copious amounts of junk-food overflow the conveyor, don’t forget Kraft mac-n-cheese. The guy tells the chick not to forget the Newport’s in the box. As the cashier finishes ringing up the $400 of mostly unhealthy “groceries” with treats and food that she would love to provide for her children, the young woman whips out the little green card. After paying for the “food,” they still owe $60 for the smokes. The young woman asks to use the cash portion of her Access card for the cigarettes. The cashier says, “I’m sorry the balance is too low for the carton.” The guy gives his girlfriend an incredulous look, and whines, ” I need my smokes.” All of a sudden the cashier feels a pain behind her eyes. Years of tedious labor and month-to-month bill-paying and watching scenarios like this one unfold have taken an untold toll on her. She finally screams with all fury, “WHY DON”T YOU GET A F%&$ING JOB!!! – THEY”RE HIRING HERE!!!” Well, the manager comes over, and sadly our overwrought and overworked cashier loses her job. It’s okay, now she and her husband who always made just too much for government benefits can get food stamps too. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

This scenario plays out far more than some of you might think. I grew up with parents who were too busy partying to actually hold jobs. Don’t worry we had food stamps. As a small child, I would walk to the corner store and buy penny fish with actual paper food stamps. I would then walk out of the store, walk back in and buy another penny fish. Back then, we received change back when it was less than a dollar. I used that change from those two transactions to buy my mom her daily smokes. Now that they have wrecked their health, they believe the government should take care of them all the more for their wasted lives. The government has a responsibility after all. They both collect SSI, other benefits, and health insurance. Worse they believe they deserve these benefits. I see them and people like them gaming the system to pay for their irresponsible lives. I am currently lower middle-class. I work full-time, and I went to school full-time while taking care of my family. I have been accepted to a top-ten law school, and I will begin the fall after returning from Afghanistan (My reserve unit is deploying). When I finally begin to make decent money, I do not want a penny of my tax dollars going to people like that. These interactions are the real cause of the beliefs of the working and lower middle-class. The people who work are tired of watching people who don’t, and yet could, get free rides. I have personally helped people with grocery money and such, and many, myself included, don’t begrudge true hard-cases receiving help. The problem is that some to many poor people only leech. I was poor, but I overcame. I want the same for other poor people, and I will gladly help any of them who want to overcome. I just don’t want to help them maintain their drug and alcohol habits.

http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell

This is the epitome of a straw-man argument.

It’s a total myth and it’s sad to see people brainwashed into believing it.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Zellers/100002246529314 Mark Zellers

W.S. Gilbert, in “The Gondoliers” made the point that “when everybody is somebody, then nobody is anybody”.

The dirty little secret of capitalism is that if a rising tide really lift all boats, then that would be inflationary and no one would be any better off.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Heaton/100000722778237 Tony Heaton

Capitalism is an economy based on supply and demand. Prices are determined by a free market. Capitalism does not cause inflation. America has not had a capitalistic economy for at least a century. America’s economy is based on Crony-Capitalism. Companies make deals with the politicians to make regulations that only affect smaller and new businesses to make it harder for those businesses to compete. The government also passes taxes to gain revenue from companies on an un-equal basis.

One form of inflation is caused by the FED printing money. Recently we’ve had two rounds of “Quantitative Easing” which is politician speak for printing money. Many peoples 401K’s have been decreased by the fall in the stock market. What most people don’t even think about is that fact that over the same period, those same 401K’s have been decreased by 6% soley by the printing of money. The FED is even considering another round of “Quantitative Easing.”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Heaton/100000722778237 Tony Heaton

It all depends on the cost of living in your area. $125K in one area could be equal to $75K in another.

The biggest mistake I see people make in the class warfare arguments is that they believe income, money and wealth are all equal. At anyone time, there is an finite amount of money but there is always an infinite amount of wealth. If I have the desire and drive, I can be just as wealthy as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. In most cases, poor people don’t have the drive. There are always exceptions but this is generally true. The old adage of “you get what you pay for’ is true. We extend unemployment benefits and we get more unemployed for longer periods. We increase the size of the welfare programs and we get more people on welfare. There are people who need help but there are a greater number that will take free help and not work. It’s much easier to take free help than it is to get a job and go to work everyday.

http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell

”If I have the desire and drive, I can be just as wealthy as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.”

Maybe if you had said, “If I have the desire, drive and opportunity and good fortune, I can be just as wealthy as Bill gates or Warren Buffet.” then you’re statement wouldn’t be laughably incorrect.

It’s pretty easy to say that no matter how hard you try you’ll never be as wealthy as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet because only a fraction of a percentage of people will ever get anywhere near that.

People mistakingly think that all it takes is hard work to become wealthy and thus those who are poor must simply not work hard. The reality of the situation is that by and large the poor (even the people who are using government assistance to survive) work much harder than the rich and most people who are rich either had a lot of luck on their side or were born into it.

http://www.facebook.com/newelllove Justin Love

There are 3 reasons I’m against raising the taxes on any group over any other group.

1. True justice that the founding fathers fought for was equal treatment under the law. To take from someone and give it to another is not equal treatment it is economic slavery. What did the person that has money do to be indebted to another?

2. My employer is in the “rich” category, poor people don’t employ others. I kinda like my job now and the potential I have to move up within my company and the more we try to take from the rich the less they will provide for others in the way of employment. Rich people will not just say “Oh well, even though the government is taking my money I’ll just do with less.” They pass on the taxes to the customers or they lay people off so they don’t have to lose money from their pockets.

3. I do intend to be rich one day with much hard work and effort on my part I know I can make it happen and no one is going to keep me down.

Antinous / Moderator

Are you willing to make a cash bet on that? Like agree to refuse unemployment benefits and welfare if you fail?
http://www.facebook.com/The.Dashiell It’sThe Dashiell

”poor people don’t employ others”

False. Poor people employ most of the working population. They do so every time they buy something. It’s a convenient lie that the rich are job creators. They are job controllers.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Beth-Cravens/704440406 Beth Cravens

“those who earned just a bit more than the minimum wage were the most resistant to increasing it.”
That’s because those of us in the low wage range know that when the min wage goes up so do prices. Every time it goes up so does the price of food etc. Those of us earning barely above minimum wage also know we’re not going to get a raise. Our wages stagnated as soon as this damned recession kicked in. The businesses that employ us are doing all they can just to stay in the black. I don’t mind paying taxes to help my neighbors put food on the table and I have several friends that depend on their unemployment, but I have to admit it chaps my ass to see someone milking the system. It also makes me angry when a company closes a plant (like Goodyear did in Union City TN) and then makes record quarter profits or when Gannett lays off thousands and the CEO gets an earnings bonus. So anyway, there’s a little perspective from a low wager, or “working poor” if you prefer. Probably a lot more accurate than some survey.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Adam-Cabe/532520216 Adam Cabe

As a Voluntaryist, I believe that taxation is violence woven right into the fabric of our society. That’s why I advocate for less taxation – it’s ideological. It has nothing to do with my socio-economic position relative to someone else. The unspoken assumption here seems to be that if someone is given a gun and an opportunity they are not a rational actor if they don’t steal from their neighbors. Weird.

SvenOrtmann

That’s part of why several European countries foster solidarity as a personal and societal virtue.

Florence Neuberger

Someone brought up Christianity. As a liberal Jew I feel that I am more Christian than the Pope. My husband always said we vote against our own best interests. And, who is it that pays 60% of their income in taxes. I don’t believe that’s been the case since WWII.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ALKJV2ZG7JEL4454UOK3UEPTZQ Steven Ray

What disappoints me is that no one who has commented has seemed to realize that the study wasn’t designed in a way that could either support or refute the assertion of the author of this article. The only redistribution choice was essentially to give to those one level below or one level above.

A high percentage of giving to the level above certainly indicates that nobody likes to be on the bottom, BUT to extrapolate that to say that those near or at the bottom want to redistribute up to the very top is absurd.

In order to support the author’s claim, those at or near the bottom would have to be given the opportunity to redistribute to those below them and above them in a way that is more representative of society. In our society those at the top may have incomes hundreds of times more than those at the bottom. So, those “one step up” from the bottom would have to be given the opportunity to redistribute money to those below them in earnings, and then in varying degrees of higher income to get the real picture. If those same people consistently gave their $2 to a group that had double the amount of money, but NEVER gave to a group that had 80 times as much money that would tell us a much different story than the same people consistently giving their 2 bucks to the group at the very top.

I suspect we’d find that there would be an aversion to distributing the money both to those just below AND just above the donor in standings. Most likely a given person would not want to propel anyone below them beyond their own standing, nor would they want to put the person just above them out of reach. That’s because of a perceived competition with those near them in the standings. However, I doubt you’d find any consistency in giving to those who were already at the top. We’d probably see a fair amount of the redistribution go to those who were far enough ahead to not be perceived as competition, but not necessarily at the top of the heap. Of course this is a guess and since the study didn’t actually test this (to the best of my knowledge) then we’ll have to wait until someone does.

Regardless, to make the claim that poor people support tax breaks for the wealthy based on this article is ridiculous. The only thing this study shows is that no one likes to be at the bottom. There is a lot of room between the bottom and the top in this country.

digi_owl

Reminds me of crab fishing, where one can collect live crab in a bucket because whenever one of them tries to climb out the rest will pull him back in.

Anony Mous

I’ve always likened capitalism to a pyramid. Yeah sure anyone “has” the opportunity to climb to the top from the very bottom. But there can be only ever be so many at the top. And all of the large bottom is supporting the tiny few at the top. Capitalism will never be an inverted pyramid. We can only hope for a rhombus.

J B

Poverty is relative. Look at many ‘poor’ people in the US who have: Air Jordans, flat screen TVs, air conditioning, etc.

That isn’t poverty in my book.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Sanders/100000011989161 Robert Sanders

Makes sense. For instance, the northern states had strong unions but the south always resisted unionization. The south was also more strict in segregating blacks and whites. With a populace of blacks permanently relegated to the bottom rung of society, the impoverished whites who were barely hovering above them could stay content with the knowledge that as bad as they had it, they weren’t technically at the bottom. The northern states however, while discriminatory, weren’t as bad, and the poor people actually realized that being screwed is being screwed, even if you’re backside is receiving a few less strokes than the other guy. Today though, if you want top feel morally and intellectually superior, watch Maury Povich or Jerry Springer, you’ll never question your place on the food chain again.

Greggem

“False. Poor people employ most of the working population. They do so every time they buy something. It’s a convenient lie that the rich are job creators.”
Well, I agree with the first half. But why don’t the rich employ people when they buy things too (or invest for that matter)? Does the money know, somehow? If buying things creates jobs, doesn’t it follow that buying more things creates more jobs?

Greggem

“ those who earned just a bit more than the minimum wage were the most resistant to increasing it.”
Maybe they realize that they’re the ones whose jobs will be at risk when it becomes illegal to employ them at the current rate. I don’t see any cognitive dissonance here.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Cheryl-Carter/100000166851469 Cheryl Carter

I found this article to be deeply disturbing, but possibly true. It’s the reason the rich and powerful are few but are successful in controlling the masses. The Unwashed Masses have never learned how to work together. They fight against each other and the rich and powerful take advantage of the situation. We all dream of a world where we will be one of the rich and powerful but we never consider the directions we must take to get there. The rich and powerful will always be so if the rest of us sit back and allow it to happen.

Why poor people support tax breaks for the rich?

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