I have not endorsed any candidate. I like Senator Bernie Sanders’ education plan better than any other I have seen but I have not endorsed Bernie nor anyone else.
I will support the nominee of the Democratic Party.
If any candidate says anything that I think is important to bring to your attention, I will share it, regardless which candidate proposes it.
This is what Bernie sent out today, and I agree with his plan. I don’t think anyone should be a billionaire. A person should be able to get by on $900 million, even $100 million. Some manage to live well on even less.
Many of our country’s billionaires are using their vast wealth to undermine and privatize public schools. One thinks of the Waltons, Gates, Broad, Hastings, Koch, Adelson, Anschutz, and that just scratches the surface.
Diane –
I want to ask you to clear your mind for a moment and count to 10.
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
6…
7…
8…
9…
10…
In those 10 seconds, Jeff Bezos, the owner and founder of Amazon, made more money than the median employee of Amazon makes in an entire year. An entire year.
Think about that.
We live in a time when millions of Americans, including many Amazon employees, are working 2 or 3 jobs to feed their families and the three wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people.
It’s absurd.
And in order to reduce the outrageous level of inequality that exists in America today and to rebuild the disappearing middle class, the time has come for the United States to establish an annual tax on the extreme wealth of the top 0.1 percent of U.S. households.
Add your name if you agree:
Our tax on extreme wealth would only apply to the wealthiest households in America and would cut the wealth of billionaires in half over 15 years — which would substantially break up the concentration of wealth and power of this small, privileged class.
This is how much more in taxes some of the richest people in America would owe this year:
The Walton family – $14.8 billion
Jeff Bezos – $8.9 billion
Charles Koch – $3.2 billion
Sheldon Adelson – $2.6 billion
Rupert Murdoch – $1.28 billion
Our plan would raise more than $4 trillion over the next decade and anyone with a net worth of less than $32 million would not see their taxes go up under this plan.
Now, I have never understood how someone could have tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and feel the desperate need for even more. I would think that with the amount of money the 0.1 percent of this country has, they might just be able to get by.
But the truth is, for the past several decades there has been a massive transfer of wealth from those who have too little to those who have too much.
And for the sake of our democracy and for working families all over America who are struggling economically, that has got to change.
But making it happen must start with all of us making our voices heard and being clear — loudly and directly — that the greed of the billionaire class of this country is intolerable, and it must end. And that starts with you:
In my view, a nation cannot survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little. Millions of people across this country struggle to put bread on the table and are one paycheck away from economic devastation, while the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good.
It has got to stop.
And when we are in the White House, it will.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
Paid for by Bernie 2020
PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Right on…Diane…shared this…thanks
I wish either Bernie or Warren would win the nomination for president.
“Mr. Sanders’s tax is projected to raise $4.35 trillion over a decade.” This certainly beats the ‘tax break for the middle class’ that was hurriedly pushed by McConnell and signed by Trump. The Trump administration had promised the cuts would pay for themselves. The deficit for the 2018 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, was the largest since 2012, when the economy and federal revenues were still recovering from the depths of the recession.
I had medical bills totaling around $8,000. [I do have medical insurance.] I wasn’t able to deduct any of that expense. The GOP and Trump don’t care about middle class or poor people. Bernie does.
The GOP wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because of the deficit that is rising. It is past time for the wealthy to pay. Further destruction of the middle class has to end.
FEEL THE BERN!!!
I guess I share Current Affairs’ opinion of Bernie v. Warren: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/09/the-prospect-of-an-elizabeth-warren-nomination-should-be-very-worrying
Well, this I also noticed.
It is difficult for Trump to engage in his usual sleazy attacks against someone who is as relentlessly on-message as Bernie is, and who draws people’s attention over and over back to a series of very simple plans: Medicare for all, Free College, Green New Deal. (Note that while Elizabeth Warren’s plans are abundant, they are often very unfocused. Her website overflows with plans, but she seems reluctant to push the phrase Green New Deal, and it’s not clear which of her endless plans she finds most important.)
Carol Malaysia, I do not advocate full elimination of the billionaire class. Diane Ravitch, political bias aside, what are your thoughts regarding Thomas Sowell?
I know Thomas Sowell very well. He is a far-right libertarian whose views on education are out of touch with the times.
Diane Ravitch, taking political factors out of the equation, what are your thoughts on the writings of Thomas Sowell?
I used to be a personal friend of Tom Sowell. He is a hard-right libertarian who thinks everyone is on his or her own, and there’s no such thing as social responsibility. I’m not aware that he does any research on current issues.
Diane Ravitch, when all hell breaks loose, will we all not be on our own respectively? What about the concept of self-preservation?
We have a national government to prevent “all hell breaking loose.”
Currently we have a non functioning national government.
Did you ever hear of FDR and the New Deal?
Diane Ravitch, the New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression.
Are you prepared to give up your Social Security? The New Deal saved America. Did you think the TVA was a mistake?
Diane Ravitch, on the TVA, I have no real opinion either way at this time. With Social Security, people who pay into that system should reap the benefits of that.
As a Lloyd said, there is no reasoning with uninformed and unreasonable people.
Go haunt someone else’s blog.
You don’t have to agree with me. And I don’t have to waste my time answering dumb questions.
Bernie just ensured that Jeff Bezos will multiply the number of anti-Sanders pieces in his paper (Washington Post) by 100 or more.
The Post will have to hire a giant team of new editors just to keep up with Bezos’ demands.
At the Washington Post, Deep Throat has given way to Deep Pockets
Yes, I am all-in for limits on individual wealth and I also want another limit for how much can be inherited after death.
For instance, if the wealth limit was $100 million for a living individual, only ten percent of that should be inheritable. The rest goes to pay off the national debt.
And wealth is not determined by earnings but by the gross worth with no deductions allowed. That means the value of your house counts as part of your wealth. If you own ten yachts like Betsy the Brainless DeVos, the market value of all ten count as part of your net worth even if they are registered outside of the United States.
I’m opposed to a wealth limit. The same result can be achieved by a progressive tax structure. Bernie’s on the right track.
Curious why you’re opposed to an explicit wealth limit but support something that reaches the same result.
No Congress, regardless of Party, would ever impose a limit on how much anyone can earn in a year. Has never happened, will never happen. The tax structure, however, can be changed. During the Eisenhower years, the marginal tax rate was 90%. I defer to others who know at what point that rate kicked in. I don’t know. I do know that we did not have the extremes of wealth and poverty that now prevail. The middle class was growing, not shrinking. There was a sense of hope, of progress. A belief that together we could make our society better.
Progressive tax structure like the Eisenhower Tax Rates?
So right, Diane! I believe that’s what so-called ‘moderates’ and ‘centrists’ call pragmatism.
Lloyd Lofthouse, people who elect to leave wealth to living family members should not have to worry about half of that money, regardless of the amount, being redistributed to people who turn welfare into a career opportunity. The difference between people who turn welfare into a career opportunity and a person on his or her deathbed who leaves wealth to loved ones is that the person who earned that wealth busted his or her butt and welfare recipients are getting handouts and doing nothing.
Stop changing the subject and ignoring all the facts and links I provided, Rangar’s-Butt.
If you are not a troll, you are stuck inside a confirmation-bias bubble that you need to pop so you can open your mind and educate yourself about the facts you are ignoring that I have provided more than once.
I am not going to do it again.
Lloyd Lofthouse, if you think I am wasting your time, then stop beating around the bush and just say it! Don’t get all huffy and act like a thin-skinned hotheaded fool!
Ragnor’s-Butt thinks I am a hotheaded fool. It takes a fool to know a fool so hello Ragnor’s-Butt, from one fool to another.
Now that we have that out of the way, go back to the comment where I provided all the evidence and links that you are wrong about everything you think.
Lloyd Lofthouse, are you one of those dunces who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 respectively? If so, that explains a lot.
I’d rather be a “dunce” (according to someone that admitted they voted for TrumpThinSkin after their first choice, Ted Cruze, lost in the 2016 GOP primaries) that voted for Obama than an ignorant, deplorable, biased fool that voted for Trump.
Lloyd Lofthouse, the dolts who voted for Barack Obama got their wish. However, he fucked us over badly.
Obama’s policies were not good for the public schools, that I know, but what do you allege that he did to “fuck us over badly?”
Please provide a list with links leading to reputable evidence from primary sources. I want to see what you will come up with other than allegations without any evidence to support what you think.
Since Trump and Fox News, Sinclar Media, Breitbart, Limbaugh, and OAN are not reliable, you cannot use any links that lead to those sites or any other right-wing talking heads that spew nonsense and lies.
Where is your evidence, your links to primary sources, other than someone else’s opinion like a Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, or that Hannity idiot on Fox?
Your opinion is worth nothing without proof from primary sources.
Lloyd,
You won’t be seeing the trolls here anymore.
Thank you. I am suspicious that someone like Alex Jones, Hannity, or Limbaugh sent them to your site to attack anyone and everyone that does not support Trump.
If true, there could be more soon.
Thank you, Diane for sharing this with us. Feel the BERN.
Feel the Bern. Sanders is using the strategy that CAP (billionaire-funded) refuses to use despite overwhelming public support for hefty taxes on the entitled donor class.
WaPo is starting the downgrading of Bernie:
…Five months after Sanders began arguing that he was the most electable Democratic candidate, a pitch he made with a tour of Rust Belt states, he has made little progress with voters terrified of a second Trump term. National and state polling has found Sanders persistently behind former vice president Joe Biden when voters are asked who has the best chance of defeating the president. In the past month, polling has found Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) roughly tied with Sanders on “electability.”..
In Iowa, Sanders occasionally referred to the national and state polls that have shown him ahead of Trump, but in an interview, he waved off the polling that had shown Democratic voters still nervous about how a democratic socialist could take the presidency.
“I’m not much into all these speculations and all these polls,” Sanders said. “One day a poll has me doing great, the next day a poll has me doing terrible. It has a lot to do with who you’re polling and what questions you’re asking. But at the end of the day, I think we’re going to win, because we have an extraordinary grass-roots movement.”
Apart from some turnover in its early state staff, the Sanders campaign has shown some broad support. It celebrated its 1 millionth individual donor last week; shortly after that, it drew an estimated 4,000 voters to a rally in Norman, Okla. (A 2016 rally in Tulsa, three times the size of Norman, had attracted a crowd of 11,000.)
But it has struggled to convince early-state voters that Sanders could win a general election, and the senator’s support in early states has slipped since the start of his campaign. In interviews around the state, some at the senator from Vermont’s rallies, voters sometimes praised Sanders or explained why they used to support him before laying out the reasons that they were supporting someone else.
“I love him. We caucused for him in 2016,” said Scott German, 50, who spent Monday evening at a rally for Buttigieg in Dubuque. “If he could win and put forward everything he’s talking about, it’d be utopia. But I don’t think America’s ready for it. We need somebody more realistic.”…
BY DAVID WEIGEL
One segment of Republicans protecting their entitlements, people like Meghan McCain, promote Biden.
George Will said that Trump has to be defeated. I hope Bernie is the person Will has to vote for in order to defeat Trump.
WaPo be damned, I expect Biden is taking some hits between (a)watching him on Dem debate [the age factor is very evident] & (b)the current [perhaps impeachment-worthy] kerfuffle, which puts him in an unfortunate light… Those who see him as just another Hillary neoliberal will be reinforced, & others may be swayed…
Washington Post = Bezos’ Hos (TM)
The Washington Post
Everyone knows
The Washington Post
Are Bezos’ hos
And gigolos
“What we’re doing with the Post is we’re working on becoming the new paper of record” — Jeff Bezos’, on his goal for the Washington Post right after he bought it.
Well, Bezos’ has already achieved his goal
The Washington Post :The Paper of Broken Records (TM)
Bernie’s Pinocchio…click…Bernie’s Pinocchio…click…Bernie’s Pinocchio..click… …..
Most of the media are downplaying Bernie. Warren is a much more accepted leftist. I just donated to Bernie, and I feel the Bern!
They quote all their BS polls (forgive the redundancy), but purposefully OMIT the one thing that actually means something: the FACT that Sanders has already received over a million donations from individuals, something that no other candidate can claim .
Of course, what would a paper like The Bezos’ Hos (aka, Washington Hos, aka Washington Post) care about facts, right?
“Money from a million individual donors” is what I meant
I suspect that the Repugnicans are figuring out that Trump will lose badly in 2020 and drag a lot of them down with him and that their only chance is to replace their candidate with someone like Romney.
Trump wouldn’t a chance in 2020. He would lose very, very badly. That’s becoming quite clear. Even the Repugnicans, dense as they are, are beginning to understand this.
the irony with Romney being that while he couldn’t pull off a win twice in a row he stayed out of the game in 2016 when the Republicans turned out to be desperately seeking one truly viable candidate
I was just about to write Bernie 2020 a check today when I read the email and then saw the post. Had to throw in an extra $25 for making the blog! Thank you, Diane. Go Bernie! Go us!
Your psyching me up! Think I’ll send small contributions to both Bernie and Liz Warren: love their billionaire-downsizing plans!
There’s nothing better than psyching people up for Bernie (except being a teacher). Thank you! Made my day.
I particularly like Bernie’s head-on confrontation: he may not word it as I would, and Diane did: “There Should be No Billionaires”– but his message makes that clear. It’s all about the “massive transfer of wealth from those who have too little to those who have too much.” Everything wrong in US society today can be traced to the Reagan-era deregs– piled onto by Clinton, Bush & Obama– that brought us the plethora of billionaires who now direct our national policy, promulgating laws to conserve/grow their wealth at the expense of the public good. It happened because of laws , and it can be reversed by laws– Bernie’s plan, or Warren’s plan.
Just imagine what our nation might have been today, had we had wise leaders confronting the dual issues of digital revolution/ automation & globalization, from the late ’70’s forward, w/an eye to planning what might work best for the entire population. Sadly instead we had rats leaving a sinking ship, & clout-y folks grabbing biggest pieces of the shrinking pie.
Actually, Bernie recently said and tweeted “There should be no billionaires.” He doesn’t mince words. Lord, I love him.
Left Coast Teachers, Bernie Sanders is a Marxist. Who has the right to decide if we should or should not have a billionaire class?
BS, Ragnar’s-Butt. Bernie Sanders is not a Marxist. He is a democratic socialist. I doubt that you know the difference living inside your ignorant confirmation-bias bubble as you do.
I have already learned not to waste my time trying to teach you the difference so I won’t.
Go away! If you cannot open your mind, please find another site with others that live in the same confirmation-bias bubble you live in.
Lloyd Lofthouse, either report me to the blog’s moderator or screw off! Stop this hissy fit b.s. routine.
Ragnar’s-Butt, don’t worry, the owner of this blog knows what is going on here. No one has to report to her when we have a fascist show up attempting to distract from the issues that we discuss on this site based on facts instead of confirmation bias and lies.
Lloyd Lofthouse, it is Ragnarsbhut, not butt. Do a spellcheck or go back to school and relearn basic vocabulary. Either that or take more dummy pills and blathering on like a damn dope!
I know what fake name you are using to hide on the internet and that the spelling for the anonymous you is ragnarsbhut, but so far you have revealed to me through your comments that you are allegedly more like a ragnar’s-butt.
That means I will continue to use the name that fits how you think based on your ignorant biased comments and your unwillingness to address the evidence and links I and others have provided that you ignore.
Until and if Trump becomes president for life, we still have the 1st Amdnemdent, so until Diane tells me to stop because this is her site, I will keep calling you the name I think that fits you better and that is Ragnar’s-Butt. Plus, Ragnar’s-Butt sounds more like the Russian that I think you are.
I mean, who are these “its”, the one that calls itself SARGENT, and the “it” that calls itself ragnarsbhut who I have never seen on this site before that shows up spewing ignorant, biased, and even racisit nonsense refusing to listen to reason based on evidence that is often linked to reputable sites?
Lloyd Lofthouse, what racist comments have I spewed?
Do not change the subject, Ragnar’s-Butt. Go back to the comment where I provided evidence and links and prove that evidence on that specific top is wrong and what you think is right.
The regular readers and commentators on this blog will be the judges.
Lloyd Lofthouse, I read the links. Since they are a bunch of b.s., I am not obligated to waste any of my time with them. I prefer to get my information from other more reliable sources. That includes Townhall.com and Infowars.com, as well as a few other sources of that ideological slant.
Wow, you keep offering evidence that you are a real deplorable Trump lemming.
Lloyd Lofthouse, thank you.
Rags, your time on my blog has come to an end. Go away.
Diane Ravitch, you have not laid out a specific set of rules regarding the comment policy. I looked it up.
Followers of this blog know the rules, which I have stated again and again.
This blog is my living room, and I make the rules.
One, don’t insult me or the blog.
Two, no cursing.
Three, be civil in exchanges with other commenters.
Four, no conspiracy theories.
You have not insulted me (yet) but you have broken the other three rules. Flagrantly.
Diane Ravitch, Lloyd Lofthouse has also been not so civil. Maybe you should get on his case also, not just mine.
Lloyd has commented here for years. I have never thought it necessary to rebuke him. It was you who dropped the F-word, not him.
ragnarsbhut: “Either that or take more dummy pills and blathering on like a damn dope!”
Lloyd Lofthouse is NOT a blathering dope. He is a well respected commentator on Diane’s blog.
I am beginning to wonder about you, however. You attack everyone on this blog, including Diane Ravitch, but don’t have anything positive to say except that you support Medicare for All.
Are you a Trump supporter? I asked that before and you didn’t answer.
Carol Malaysia, I had favored Ted Cruz. Having said that, I settled for Donald Trump on the basis that he is not a political hack like many of our leaders.
Carol, congratulations, you got a straight and honest answer out of Ragnar’s-Butt. He/she is a Trumpist (probably white and male living in the midwest or deep south) that preferred Ted Cruze during the 2016 GOP primaries.
Now that we know who Ragnar’s-Butt really is, the anonymous name I am using to ID this far-right troll fits.
Lloyd Lofthouse, are you one of those who supported Bernie Sanders and yet had been weeping over your Cheerios when he dropped out? Did you need a safe space when Donald Trump kicked Hillary Clinton’s fat ass during his 2 debates with her?
Keep it up, Ragnar’s-Butt. The more trash you spew, the more you reveal the real you.
Why are you on this site? Go back to reading Trump’s tweets.
Lloyd Lofthouse, at least Donald Trump is not a pathological liar.
Really, you think Trump does not lie. Wow, you really are one of his deplorable followers. A cement wall has a mind more open than anyone that thinks Trump is honest.
Trump is a malignant narcissist. Do you know what that means?
Trump has been a serial liar for most if not all of his life.
Trump has been a con-man, a fraud, a cheat, most if not all of his life.
Lloyd Lofthouse, that is a bunch of b.s. propaganda. You know it and I know it.
No, that is what you think and what you think is based on what people like Trump, Fox, Hannity, and/or Limbaugh (Trump awarded this hate monger a medal of some kind) told you to think.
Borrowing two words Rush Limbaugh called his followers back when I listened to his talk show in the 1970s, you are a Ditto Head. In every show I tuned into, Limbaugh told his “ditto heads” that they didn’t have to think because he would think for them.
It doesn’t matter if you listen to Limbaugh or not. In my dictionary, if you think Trump isn’t a liar that makes you a deplorable lemming that would follow your leader Trumpty Dumpty off a cliff for a great fall.
Lloyd Lofthouse, you are full of b.s. and you know it.
Wrong, Ragnar’s-Butt. It is your opinion that I am full of BS just like it is my opinion that you are full of BS.
Just because you can think it, doesn’t make you right.
Lloyd Lofthouse, what makes you think I am not right?
Donald Trump is indeed a pathological liar.
Have you ingested Clorox yet?
How about hydroxychloroquibe?
ragnarsbhut; “I settled for Donald Trump on the basis that he is not a political hack like many of our leaders.”
Again, I ask. Tell me what great accomplishments Trump has done. He is unique in his ability to lie over 19,000 times and still have supporters.
You admit that you get some of your ‘facts’ from InfoWars. What a great source of information. /s
From Wikipedia:
InfoWars is a far-right American conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones. It was founded in 1999, and operates under Free Speech Systems LLC….The site has regularly published fake stories which have been linked to harassment of victims. In February 2018, Jones, the publisher, director and owner of InfoWars, was accused of discrimination and sexually harassing employees. InfoWars, and in particular Jones, advocate numerous conspiracy theories particularly around purported domestic false flag operations by the U.S. Government (which they allege include the 9/11 attacks and Sandy Hook shootings). InfoWars has issued retractions various times as a result of legal challenges. Jones has had contentious material removed, and has also been suspended and banned from many platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, and Roku.
InfoWars earns revenue from the sale of products pitched by Jones during the show, including dietary supplements. It has been called as much “an online store that uses Mr. Jones’s commentary to move merchandise”, as a media outlet.
Carol Malaysia, I would put more stock in Infowars overr those slack-jawed half-witted dopes at the New York Times. Not even the Washington Post is worthy of my time.
You just revealed who you are. You believe that sick Alex Jones rather than The NY Times or the Washington Post. You are on the wrong blog. Post on Infowars or some other rightwing site.
Carol,
We had multiple comments by Trump trolls today. I was attending to non-blog matters (like no into into a new apartment) and I didn’t keep an eye on them.
The two deplorables are gone and won’t be back.
Diane, thank you!!! ragnarsbhut was a real doozie.
Hope all is going well in your other activities…finding a new apartment?
We started renovation of a small condo in late January. Everything ground to a halt by mid-March. We are in final throes of moving in.
ragnarsbhut: “Bernie Sanders is a Marxist.” Are you in the crowd that believes that Medicare for All will make the U.S. just like Argentina? Or is it totally respectable to have a wealthy country that has millions of people who can’t afford to go to a doctor?
I supported Bernie and still have a Bernie sticker taped to the back window of my car. Bernie recognized that having too much money from the wealthy influencing politics will result in poor or no healthcare, low paying jobs [Why should anyone work full time and not be able survive on that salary?], corporate fraud, many children who cannot afford college or will spend their whole lives paying off loans and the continuing underfunding of public schools.
If you approve of the Trump administration, please elaborate in detail why. I personally haven’t seen anything he does except hurt and destroy. Each day is a new destruction and a new day for some disgusting Twitter post. What type of intelligent president doesn’t have press conferences but has ego rallies?
Carol Malaysia, I like the idea of Medicare For All. This is one of the few areas that a lot of its supporters get right.
“Who has the right to decide if we should or should not have a billionaire class?”
The people. And as in all modern societies, they won’t exist for long to take our money aways and jerk the World around..
She put her toe in the water yesterday with her much touted move to begin an impeachment investigation, which will undoubtedly drag on until she is 100 years old and still speaker of the house (with a Steven Hawking’s computer generated voice, of course)
And the only reason she did that is because of all the flak she is getting from pretty much everyone with a brain.
In other news, Nancy Pelosi is said to be inching closer to position that sky is blue, water wet.
Wealth taxes are much harder to enforce than income taxes. Income taxes involve a flow from one place to another so they are easier to observe. Wealth can sit in a safety deposit box or be hung on a wall, difficult for the government to detect and evaluate. Wealth can change significantly from day to day, and the wealthy can change citizenship if they desire.
I am not sure that this proposal is practical, though perhaps practicality is not really a concern.
I think that Bernie by far is the best candidate running, especially for K-12 education. I am frustrated that the voices of rank-and-file members matter not to AFT and NEA leadership.
A petition to allow one-member, one-vote on endorsements was defeated at the NEA national convention. Labor Notes reports that the AFT also has not made a commitment to hearing rank-and-file voices:
“A new website, AFTVotes.org, declares the union’s commitment to “increased member engagement, input, and feedback” and to “ensure transparency,” but with endorsement ultimately still resting with the Executive Council and no mention of a membership vote.”
Russell Weiss-Irwin in Boston is trying to make the process more democratic. He has created a petition calling for locals to adopt a resolution supporting endorsement decisions based on one-member, one-vote, instead of the executive boards (who are largely insulated from their rank-and-file members). Diane, if it would be possible for you to write a post about this, that would be great.
Here are the links to the Labor Notes article and the petition:
https://www.labornotes.org/2019/09/members-demand-voice-their-unions-presidential-endorsements
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdP04_EZ3WWt3GZB7f0qpKGE23WAS4VIBYJ9mDSMLjXEL7UKw/viewform?fbclid=IwAR17LMZdOa03f4zVlGUSu9c0HgFZuPUQufp7lT4yS23ILHVKoqhM2wZnPjk
Tax plans of this nature, will never get through the Congress. And what makes people think that the wealthy people will sit still like sheep waiting to be sheared? They will move their assets into tax shelters, or move them offshore.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…
Or not. Maybe we will not go to the moon because it is hard. It’s really hard. Rockets seem to blow up a lot. And the moon keeps changing its position anyway. Let’s just go shopping and then watch television instead.
If the wealthy survive the pitchforks, they can go offshore. Wall Street drags down GDP by an estimated 2%. It’s time for labor to stop propping up the unproductive welfare, leisure, donor class at the top.
It’s just a matter of time until the Hong Kong-style protests hit here.
I expect Americans protecting democracy will be aggressive against specific targets among the richest 400 families.
Although I look at Bernie Sanders as some loud mouth old dude who looks ragity, disheveled and drawn a bit, I must agree that the US tax structure is over due for structural change.
We have too many billionaires in this country now and they are becoming more powerful than anyone ever imagined. Michael Bloomberg destroyewd the NYC school system because he has billions and just decided he knew what was best for the NYC schools.
However, I can tell ya this jack ass screwed up the school sytem so bad we are all still paying for his awful structural changes. For example billionaire bloomberg decided to tear down all the comprehensive high schools in NYC and replaced them with small poorly run “acamedies” with young principals many of whom never ever taught in a classroom. Billionaire bloomberg tried to purge senior level teachers all because he said they were making toouch money. Billionaire bloomberg took away teacher parking permits, teacher cafeterias and teacher lounges and berated the teachers on a daily basis saying most teachers especially the higher paid ones are “bad” teachers.
If creepy blooberg would have never been allowed to accumulate all this tremendous amount of money he would NEVER ever been able to make education decisions which now affect millions of students and educators living under the bloomberg legacy of misery
Bloomberg said he was God. What better reason for a takedown?
Bernie looks like the over-worked, middle and poor classes, wearing his Kohl’s suit instead of a $2,000 DeVos outfit.
If media was fair, Bernie would have been anointed by the people as their candidate years ago.
This is not a beauty contest. I’ll take a loud mouth, disheveled old guy that speaks the truth any day over a liar in a $2,000 suit.
I think a few good questions for presidential candidates would be these:
1. How will the US (and other countries for that matter) deal with staggering mass migrations of people due to climate change?
2. We are moving more and more towards automation. What will be the impact on our financial systems? How will we as a country (and world) deal with the fact that there will not be enough jobs? Can we envision a world that does not have work and money as the financial foundation of society? (I think it’s coming.)
The 3rd through 9th questions for the candidates are (3) How soon are you going to implement Eisenhower’s marginal tax rates? (4) How soon is the IRS going to crackdown on tax write-offs for venture philanthropy and politicized religious organizations? (5) How soon can we expect powerful labor organizations? (6) When can you promise public display of time sheets accounting for daily activities of the donor class? (7) When will you fully fund NPR and PBS so they are not forced to be plutocratic media? (8) When will ALEC and the Federalist Society be shut down?
(9) When will campaign finance be redesigned for the people?
NPR should not be fully funded.
They should be fully DEfunded. That should include a ban on ALL spending by ANY Federally funded NPR member station on NPR programming or “member dues”. In other words, continue to fund the local stations around the country, but ban them from sending a single time to the NPR parent, which has become like a giant vaccuum sucking up local programming dollars.
NPRs grotesque cheerleading in the lead up to the Iraq war (by fake Quaker Scott Simon and others) was simply beyond the pale. It had nothing whatsoever to do with journalism and everything to do with propaganda.
And NPR makes no secret of the fact that they hate Sanders. You can hear their contempt for him in their voices.
This has to do with the people who work at NPR, not simply who funds them (although the latter also obviously impacts what they say)
NPR is a propaganda outlet, pure and simple.
If anyone needs proof of that, all they need to do is look into the background of the person who was just chosen to head NPR.
NPR no longer even tries to hide the fact that they are Nationalist Propaganda Radio.
If anyone wants documentation of the right wing swing of NPR, visit the blog NPR Check (by Matthew Murray), which is no longer active but which acted as a reality check on NPRs BS for several years.
It’s an eye-opener to anyone who believes NPR is a “liberal news outlet” (and is not completely blind)
My basic faith in my fellow man was showing.
Sociopaths may be at the top of all American organizations as the result of years of unrestrained greed.
Trump has ‘around 30 attorneys working for him’. What a waste of taxpayer money. This is Trump’s thing…sue, sue, sue and sue. Now he gets attorneys for free.
……………………………..
We can’t stop pushing for impeachment
We made an impeachment inquiry happen.
Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally endorsed a formal impeachment inquiry. It took months of organizing and massive public pressure and it couldn’t have happened without CREDO members and our progressive allies.
We’re grateful and inspired but we can’t stop now. House Democrats have the power to move with speed and purpose toward a full floor vote on articles of impeachment by November 15 – but we need to keep up the pressure.
Tell the House Democrats charged with leading on impeachment: No more slow walking. Get articles of impeachment on the House floor for a vote by November 15.
It has taken far too long to get to this point, and there are still some gaping holes in Democrats’ plans.
Timing: Until now, Democrats have done far more foot-dragging than leading. With no commitment to an end date, there is a serious risk of “running out the clock” while Trump continues to escalate his abuses of office. Speaker Pelosi should cancel the October recess to keep the momentum moving on impeachment; the Judiciary Committee should schedule a final vote on articles of impeachment no later than November 1, 2019; and the full House must vote no later than November 15.
Scope: The inquiry should not be limited to the Ukraine revelations, or the Mueller report, but should include the full range of Trump’s impeachable offenses. These include: abuse of power to undermine the freedom of the press and to investigate and prosecute political adversaries and critics; corruption of elections; abuse of office to foment and act on racism; and corruption and self-enrichment.
Staffing: As Rep. Ted Lieu pointed out this week, “Trump has around 30 attorneys working to defy Congress & the American people. Our House Counsel staff is tiny in comparison.” The Democratic majority must do everything it can to increase the capacity of the committees to hold fully staffed public hearings in October.
Power: To date, Trump’s lackeys have obstructed Democrats’ investigations at every turn, but Democrats have not levied any serious consequences for their contempt. Congress has an explicit power – inherent contempt – to compel witnesses to cooperate. Democratic committee chairs need to start holding Republican witnesses accountable if they refuse to participate.
The momentum is clearly on our side, but we will not win if we don’t demand bold, strategic leadership from Speaker Pelosi and the chairs of the six committees conducting the impeachment investigation. The more of us who add our names, the louder our voices will be demanding we finally get the leadership we deserve.
Click the link below to add your name today:
https://act.credoaction.com/sign/impeach-inquiry-next-steps/?sp_ref=514697993.4.199902.e.640518.2&referring_akid=34215.1912996.zkAGMa&source=mailto_sp
“Now is the time to warrior up.” –Autumn Peltier
I like that!
I am not in favor of extreme wealth inequality. Having said that, what one labors for and all ensuing fruits should go to that person and the family members of that person. Why some people feel the need or desire to arbitrarily take wealth from some people by force and give it to other people is absurd.
The Walton children earned nothing. They inherited billions from their father and grandfather. They never worked. Why should they have $150 billion, which they use to eliminate the democratic rights of others? Maybe they should work a day a year to find out what work is.
Diane Ravitch, that money is family money by definition. I know that people who sit and collect welfare have no understanding of the virtue of hard work, however, people who do inherit wealth seem to be more appreciative of the fact that someone had to work for it. Besides, unlike welfare benefits that we, the taxpayers pay for to support those who collect welfare and complain about how hard life is, those people whose wealth is inherited seem to be more aware of the time and effort that was put into the creation of that wealth. What rights of one group is being violated just because some other group has more money? You claim that the Walton children earned nothing? While this may be true, the parents did earn that money, so the parents should have every right to decide what happens to all after-tax money.Quite honestly, I am worn out on people telling sob stories in order to get us to pay for their stuff. Free college? If one wants that, serve in any branch of the armed forces, even if there is no active combat, with the free college as a reward. Just demanding that it be free is absurd.
The Waltons are collecting welfare. None of them ever worked a day in their lives. They didn’t have to. They should pay their taxes and stop ruining the lives of other people and other people’s children.
ragnarsbhut is allegedly too ignorant to know that Walmart pays most of its employees poverty wages with no medical coverage (medical coverage is offered but the employees have to pay a monthly fee and it usually is more than they earn) and holds workshops teaching them how to apply for food stamps and other welfare they qualify for because they are paid so little.
“Many Walmart workers being paid $9/hour would qualify for public assistance. At $9/hour and 34 hours a week (Walmart’s definition of “full-time” work), an employee would take home just $15,912/year. This single worker would qualify for three out of five public programs for which they would be eligible.”
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issues/corporate-tax-dodgers/the-walmart-tax-subsidy/
“Report: Walmart Workers Cost Taxpyaers $6.2 Billion in Public Assistance”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/#2ab59f48720b
Diane Ravitch, they are not collecting welfare. You know it and I know it.
Ragnarsbhut should be Ranor’s-Butt, because that is allegedly where his/her thinking takes place, on a toilet seat.
“Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare” Programs
“About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.”
https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-vs-social-welfare/
“Corporate Welfare: How Exactly Does It Affect Us As Americans”
“Welfare is a dirty word in America. Corporate welfare is the real dirty word, though, X rated in fact. See just who gets the real welfare in America.”
https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/corporate-welfare/
We already know without a doubt that the Walmart fortune would not be anywhere close to its size today without welfare, period. “In fact, a single Walmart Supercenter is estimated to cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.74 million per year in public assistance money. For Walmart, this represents tens of millions of dollars in savings, all on the backs of America’s taxpayers and workers.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/04/18/there-is-no-walmart-tax-every-tax-day-we-get-told-there-is-and-every-year-its-still-untrue/#229915e641fe
What about Donald Trump?
“A Trump Empire Built on Inside Connections and $885 Million in Tax Subsidies”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/04/18/there-is-no-walmart-tax-every-tax-day-we-get-told-there-is-and-every-year-its-still-untrue/#229915e641fe
Then Trump ended up filing several bankruptcies that cost US banks more than a billion dollars. Add the cost of the bankruptcies to the tax subsidies Trump used to build those businesses that do not exist anymore, and Trump lost more than $2 billion.
Who is the biggest welfare king now?
The guy that gets a few hundred in SNAP food stamps a month or someone like the Waltons that adds millions and billion to their fortunes through Corporate Welfare that is labeled tax subsidies?
Lloyd Lofthouse, the difference between welfare programs and inherited wealth is that welfare programs are subsidized by wait for it… wait for it…we, the taxpayers. At least those whose wealth is inherited knew in advance what it took for the people who gave them that wealth to earn it. Welfare benefits are paid for by taxpayers with no accountability to the taxpayers. If some family lands on welfare, that family should be grateful for the benefits that they receive, not using their status as welfare recipients to act like they are deserving of more free stuff.
Ragnar’s-Butt, why did you totally ignore the facts I pointed out that Corporate Welfare for the already rich and powerful costs taxpayers much more than the cost of food stamps through SNAP and Section 8 Housing for citizens that do not EARN enough to survive from their poverty-wage jobs?
Ignoring salient points in a debate is a sign of a troll working to disrupt and spread confusion. I accuse you of being one of those TROLLs.
Welfare reform during President Bill Clinton’s administration ended the era of alleged welfare queens that collected money but did not work a job.
“A central pledge of Clinton’s campaign was to reform the welfare system, adding changes such as work requirements for recipients. … It started the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/22/clinton-signs-welfare-to-work-bill-aug-22-1996-790321
Then under President G. W. Bush, the laws for the working class filing for bankruptcy changed, too, while nothing changed about bankruptcy for corporations. Corporations can still have their debts forgiven, but not the working class.
“President Bush signed the biggest rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy law in a quarter-century on Wednesday, making it harder for debt-ridden Americans to wipe out their obligations.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7575010/ns/business-personal_finance/t/bush-signs-tougher-bankruptcy-bill-law/#.XuvH7ud7mUk
Most of America’s working-class families that collect food stamps through SNAP or benefit from Section 8 Housing have jobs but they do not earn enough to survive financially. Because they are among America’s working poor, they are qualified to collect food stamps and possibly Section 8 Housing assistance.
Welfare programs in the United States focus on those families where members from those families have jobs but are paid poverty wages so they live in poverty.
Living in poverty in the United States does not mean those people are sitting around and doing nothing, Ragnor-‘s Butt.
“Wage stagnation and the increasing number of people who are working yet still poor are significant challenges of our era. One recent study found that there isn’t a single congressional district in the country where a full-time minimum wage worker could afford a two-bedroom apartment. With the rapid growth of unstable, low-paying jobs and the failure of even full-time work to pay family-supporting wages, it is critical to understand working poverty in order to enact policies that lift working families out of poverty.”
https://www.policylink.org/data-in-action/overview-america-working-poor
“SNAP (food stamps) eligibility rules require that participants be at or below 130% of the Federal Poverty Level. … According to demographic data, 39.8% of SNAP participants are white, 25.5% are African-American, 10.9% are Hispanic, 2.4% are Asian, and 1% are Native American.”
What is the average SNAP benefit?
“In 2017, the average SNAP client received a monthly benefit of $126.”
How many Americans on food stamps are children – the parents often work in jobs that pay them poverty waged?
“Recent studies show that 44% of all SNAP participants are children (age 18 or younger), with almost two-thirds of SNAP children living in single-parent households.”
Undocumented immigrants are not (and never have been) eligible for SNAP benefits. Documented immigrants can only receive SNAP benefits if they have resided within the United States for at least five years (with some exceptions for refugees, children, and individuals receiving asylum).
https://www.snaptohealth.org/snap/snap-frequently-asked-questions/
Meanwhile, vomit like Donald Trump who was born into a wealthy family and had his start in business with a lot of financial help from his father collected more than $800 million in corporate welfare to build his failed gambling empire that cost US banks an additional billion dollars when that Trump business went bankrupt.
Do you know that while Trump’s gambling empire wasn’t earning enough to pay its bills to contractors, suppliers, and the banks, he was paying himself millions in annual wages as the CEO, and giving himself raises every year?
Lloyd, he can’t answer.
Thank you, but I do not think he would answer. I asked similar questions and he ignored them all. Several of us tried to debate with facts and links. Instead of debating, he stayed on point attacking commies and accusing me and others of being commies, attacking Berrnie, attacking anyone that did not agree with him.
Simply, it was apparent that SARGE learned his one-sided attack everyone that does not agree and fall into line repeatedly because it is apparent that he has been a rabid fan of someone like Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, or Hannity for years and possibly decades.
His use of the word “commies” is so outdated, it should have died with the cold war. That is why I suspect he retired from the military, if he ever served, back during the cold war before the end of the Soviet Empire, and his thinking is trapped in that time.
Lloyd Lofthouse: It is horrible that so many people in this country get their information from loonies like Rush L., Hannity or Alex Jones. Too many believe that which just isn’t true. Will the blatant proliferation of nonsense [alternative facts] eventually bring down this country? What about the coverups or lies that also come from Breitbart, Sinclair, NRATV, Patriotic Times or Breaking Christian News? Some misguided believers are uneducated but others are wealthy and well educated.
On a brighter note:
How many facts could The Fact Checker check? This book has the answer.
“Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth,” published by Scribner this month, tells the story of a president who has racked up more than 19,000 false or misleading claims — and what it’s like to fact check him.
The book is already a national best-seller, according to Publishers Weekly, and earned a starred review from Kirkus. Susan B. Glasser of the New Yorker called it “a great public service of a book” and the Bergen Record said it was “an authoritative and pull-no-punches guide through Trump’s alternative universe.”
The book methodically debunks a host of statements and tweets the president has made on the economy, immigration, foreign policy, his impeachment, the Russia probe, the coronavirus pandemic and more. The book is as comprehensive as it is reader-friendly, divided into chapters by subject. It’s available in print, e-book and audiobook.
There are two types of people that will be willing to read “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth.” Avid readers will be in this group because they tend to be more educated and more open-minded. The publishing industry reports that are about 60 million Americans that are avid readers reading 10 to 50 or more books a year.
Then there are those that read a few books a year, that still have open minds and fact checks from reliable sources to make sure they are not being manipulated and fooled. Some of this group might read the blurbs and reviews about the book and that will be enough for them because the book isn’t in a genre they read like mystery or romance.
Then there are those that have not made up their minds because they were first manipulated by an Always Trumper. Some of them will read the book because they haven’t made up their minds. Some will not. Most of these people that vote are registered as independent voters
Then there are the two types that will never read the book and without looking at it, will proclaim for all to hear that it is “fake news”. Those are Always Trumpers and they have already turned over their blind allegiance to TrumpelThinSkin. Most of these people do not read books, ever. If they read anything, it is usually a menu at McDonald’s. They are the ones that follow Trump’s blizzard-of-lies that flood through twitter, and some of them will go out of their way to attend Trump’s hate rallies.
Then there are those who are like my father was. My father has been gone for decades but when he was alive there was only one thing he believed about politics. They are all liars” and that was the reason my parents never voted and I grew up in a totally apolitical house. If I hadn’t joined the Marines, fought in Vietnam, and then gone to college on the GI Bill, I’d probably be more like them today, ignoring what was going on in the political arena. But, with Trumpty Dumpty’s three-ring circus of lies, fraud, crimes, and misinformation going nonstop 24/7, that would not be easy.
Lloyd Lofthouse: The Trump ego rallies are likely to be populated by uniquely COVID-19-skeptical hordes amid a surging pandemic. Coming to one of his rallies is a way to cull the herd. Trump can Make America Great Again…resign.
There’s no controlling stupid.
Keep America Great (Live Version) – Original Song for President Trump’s 2020 Campaign
Jun 11, 2020
Camille & Haley
We had two Trumpers on the blog yesterday and they were rigid, unreasoning, closed minded and certain about their opinions. They got their news from Alex Jones and maybe FOX.
I agree. That was apparent even for SARGE that claimed he did not vote for Trump while he was spewing the word “commie” and attacking all the Democratic candidates.
Sun Tzu wrote about 2,500 years ago that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and The Art of War is studied at West Point because it is still relevant today.
So, if SARGE is enemies with all those “commie” Democratic candidate even though SARGE alleged he did not vote for Trump, if we agree with Sun Tzu, SARGE is an ally of Trump’s even if SARGE will not admit it to himself or anyone else.
ragnarsbhut: “I know that people who sit and collect welfare have no understanding of the virtue of hard work,…”
Please elaborate on how you are so knowledgeable about people who don’t have jobs don’t understand the VIRTUE of hard work.
People who are poor are just like everyone else. The only difference is that they DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY. I grew up in a poverty household and I know what I’m talking about.
Other countries believe in helping their citizens. In the US the philosophy is “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. I’m sick of that motto. People who live in happiest countries get much more support that the stingy to non-existent amount given in the US.
Ranked: The 20 Happiest Countries In The World
At a time like this—when the coronavirus pandemic is sweeping the globe and has killed over 10,000 people—we need some happy news. The annual World Happiness Report has just been released, timed to the UN’s annual International Day of Happiness on March 20. For the third year in a row, Finland has placed at the top of the list as the happiest country in the world, with Denmark coming in second, followed by Switzerland, which pushed Norway out of the top three this year. (For tips on how people in Finland stay so happy, check out “Coronavirus Advice: The Happiest People In The World Share 5 Ways To Be Happy.”)
The World Happiness Report is an annual survey by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations. It looks at the state of global happiness in 156 countries, ranking countries using the Gallup World Poll and six factors: levels of GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom and corruption income. The World Happiness Report was originally launched in 2012.
The U.S. ranked number 18—a slight uptick from last year when it ranked 19, although it’s still far below its 11th place ranking in the first World Happiness Report. Last year’s report explained it: “The years since 2010 have not been good ones for happiness and well-being among Americans.”
World’s 20 Happiest Countries
Finland
Denmark
Switzerland
Iceland
Norway
Netherlands
Sweden
New Zealand
Austria
Luxembourg
Canada
Australia
United Kingdom
Israel
Costa Rica
Ireland
Germany
United States
Carol Malaysia, people who have gone on live TV to issue demands for free things and claim to be on government assistance are an example. Do they need help? Perhaps, however, some of these people could also be frauds.. Are there some cases of welfare fraud? Yes.
There are cases of welfare fraud BUT the measly amount taken is minuscule compared to the amounts taken by corporations who refuse to pay decent salaries, tax breaks for the wealthy who don’t need more money and the corporate and Congressional ‘legal’
fraud that passes as laws.
Carol Malaysia, who would you be inclined to take more seriously-someone who says that his or her family is scraping by to put the kid through college, despite the person being an adult or someone who says that his or her family is starving and they actually are?
ragnarsbhut: You are basically detaching yourself from the needs of people. None of this bothers you so it isn’t something to be concerned about.
Why should anyone have to choose which is worse: having difficulty putting a child through college or starving?
Carol Malaysia, I am not detaching myself from reality. The point of that question was centered around my belief that a family who was starving should be of more concern to us than a person who was telling a sob story and using that as an excuse to act like he or she was deserving of a college education.
“I know that people who sit and collect welfare have no understanding of the virtue of hard work,”
Hard work? I’d have to work 10 thousand years as a college prof to make as much as the Waltons or Bill gates make in a year. Do they work 10 thousand times harder than me? Give me a break.
These people (or their parents or grandparents) took money from other people, and the time has come to give it back.
Mate Wiredl, people who want free things have no clue as to the actual costs.
The wealth of billionaires is not the fruit of their labor but other people’s labor. Hence redistributing the money to those who actually produced it is not absurd but the way a proper system works.
Mate Wierdl, any person could earn a billion dollars. They just have to put in the time and effort, learn to manage their money effectively, as well as make sensible investments. Bill Gates knows how to manage his money.
ragnarsbhut: All I have to do is manage my money the same way as billionaires do?
When I worked in the States I managed to save $50 ONE YEAR as a single parent teacher. I had to return some bagged individually wrapped chocolate candies on Halloween because I couldn’t afford to keep them. One time I put in $.75 cents worth of gas in my car because that was all that I had and it was pay day at school. I would take my daughter to McDonalds and couldn’t afford to buy a meal for myself. My place had poor insulation and my place was cold a lot of the time during the winter.
Tell me that ALL I had to do was save and invest to make billions. Most teachers nowadays have to work 2-3 jobs to survive.
What alternative universe do you come from?
Carol Malaysia, I was speaking in more generic terms. You should look up Dave Ramsey sometime. Look up all of the financial gurus and take lessons on saving money from them. Money management should be encouraged.
ragnarsbhut: “Money management should be encouraged.” Don’t speak in general terms. It is individual people who are struggling. Each person should count!
I went overseas and finally got a job that paid decently. I have money that is being managed by a good financial advisor.
People who don’t have money, and that is increasingly the middle class AND the poor, are surviving and they often need help.
What is more important: a gallon of milk or gas to get to work? Millions of people don’t have health insurance and they can’t afford to go to doctors. The GOP continuously wants to cut SNAP because of the belief that ‘starving people’ will get off their lazy butts and go to work.
Don’t be part of the problem. Geesh.
Carol Malaysia, I was not making a generic statement. If people had not been booted off of their health insurance, this would not have been a problem. We also have people who are financially irresponsible. Not all of them, however, being financially irresponsible is a problem that adversely affects many people.
Thank you for this helpful advice. Now I realize we can all be billionaires. All we need to do is manage our money. Or, like the Waltons and DeVos, inherit it.
Diane Ravitch, while it can be argued that an inheritance could be seen as income for the recipient(s) who get that inheritance, that money has already been taxed again and again. Why tax it again and redistribute it to people who have done nothing to deserve it that the family who had it does not know?
Read this book: The Spirit Level.
It will Answer your question.
Do you remember that dangerous radical Dwight D. Eisenhower? When he was president, the marginal income tax for the highest earner was 90%.
Technically speaking, it was 91%. However, nobody paid it because of the various loopholes, credits and deductions.
Back in the Ike era, CEOs were paid about 20 times as much as the average worker. Now they are paid almost 300 times as much as the average worker. We had a fairer society then. Ike got it right. Republicans then cared about their communities. No more.
Diane Ravitch, both political Parties are essentially owned by the rich.
“Why tax it again and redistribute it to people who have done nothing to deserve it ”
Yeah, they don’t deserve it because they produced it. Only those who take the money from other people deserve it. This is the logic you have been trying to promote. Logic which has been outdated for about 200 years.
Mate Wierdl, the only people who should have any right to the money of a hard working family are the people who earned it and their family members. Otherwise, those who are on the outside and have done nothing are undeserving of it.
“money of a hard working family are the people who earned it ”
Nobody earns a billion dollars because they took it from other people. This is the problem with your logic: your premise is wrong. And if the premise is wrong, you can conclude anything, hence your statements are without any meaning.
“If Elvis is alive, I am a man” True, because only in case Elvis is alive you claim to be a male
“If Elvis is alive, I am a woman” True, because only in case Elvis is alive you claim to be a female.
So instead of starting with a wrong premise and than making meaningless statements repeatedly, let’s talk about the premise: how come we allowed billionaires take money from other people, and how can we now redistribute their money to those who actually earned it: the 99%.
HOW PERVASIVE IS CORPORATE FRAUD?
Alexander Dyck
University of Toronto
Adair Morse
University of California at Berkeley & NBER
Luigi Zingales*
University of Chicago, NBER, & CEPR
April 2017
ABSTRACT
We provide a new estimate of the proportion of corporate fraud that normally goes undetected. To identify the potential hidden part of the ‘iceberg’ we take advantage of Arthur Andersen’s demise, which forces companies to change auditors and increases the likelihood to expose preexisting frauds. This experiment suggests that only one third of frauds are detected in normal times, and leads us to infer that in the 1996-2004 period one large publicly-traded US firms out of every eight was engaged in fraud. We obtain similar estimates by using alternative approaches. Combining this information with cost estimates suggests that in the 1996-2004 period fraud in large corporations destroyed between $180 and $360 billion a year.
Carol Malaysia, this is interesting.
Diane Ravitch, I will apologize for some of my harsh commentaries. Having said that, Lloyd Lofthouse started this quarrelsome exchange when he called me a butt, not bhut, as my blog domain says.
Let’s see if you can make civil comments
Diane Ravitch, Lloyd Lofthouse, Carol Malaysia and Máté Wierdl, Bernie Sanders said that there should be no billionaires. While I believe that there are more important things in life than money, just saying that someone has too much money creates an entitlement mentality.
What? You think that billionaires are “entitled” to inherit vast wealth, but poor people are “entitled” to poverty?
Diane Ravitch, you took my statement out of context. No person is entitled to that which belongs to another. An example: I am not entitled to walk up to any berry bushes you have and take off with half of the berries in the process, nor are you entitled to do that to me if I have a garden that has berry bushes.
Why are you so worried about billionaires paying taxes? Taxes are the price people pay for civilization.
Read “The Spirit Level,” then write a book report.
Diane Ravitch, paying a price to live in a civilized society is one thing. Taking money by force from one person to give to another is not civilized.
Taxation is not force. Why don’t you move to a country with no taxes?
Diane Ravitch, I did not say that taxation is not force. Taking money from one person to give to another is done with the use of force in mind.
“Taking money by force from one person to give to another is not civilized.”
Is that what taxation is – taking money by force like a bank robber shoving a gun in a bank teller’s face and demanding she empty her cash drawers or die?
I always thought taxes were the price we paid to live in a civilized state with courts, judges and juries, protection from the police, and an army. navy and airforce to protect us from attacks by foreign powers like Russia, Trumplandia, or North Korea.
“To meet their expenses, the government needs income, called ‘revenue,’ which it raises through taxes. In our country, governments levy several different types of taxes on individuals and businesses. The Federal Government relies mainly on income taxes for its revenue. State governments depend on both income and sales taxes.”
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Taxes/Pages/economics.aspx
If you dislike paying taxes, I suggest you move to one of the four countries without income taxes.
Some of the most popular countries that offer the financial benefit of having no income tax are Bermuda, Monaco, the Bahamas, Andorra and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/100215/5-countries-without-income-taxes.asp
All you have to do is renounce your citizenship and then the U.S. government will not collect taxes from you any longer … unless they will still tax any money you collect from an American retirement plan and Social Security.
Lloyd Lofthouse, when I spoke of taking money from people by force, I was speaking to people who want the rich to pay for their stuff without any benefit to them in return. Here is a video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e50fQLyebI If someone wants to go to college, he or she should take responsibility for that choice. That person has no right to demand that other people pick up the tab.
Total nonsense. For many years, different states offered free college education. That built the talent of America.
Were you opposed to the GI Bill? Do you think all those veterans were freeloaders for getting a free college education?
Your love of billionaires and your desire to protect their wealth are bizarre.
Diane Ravitch, the people who joined the military got the free college as a reward. Most people who issue what they call demands for free college have not done anything to deserve it.
Every American who wants to attend college and can’t afford it should get it free.
Diane Ravitch, by that logic, I should be able to demand that a coffee shop give me a free cup of coffee.
You are ridiculous. Education is a basic human right.
A cup of coffee is not.
Diane Ravitch, your tax dollars pay for public schools, as is the case with college tuition being paid in order to be able to attend a college. A cup of coffee at a coffee shop is paid for by the consumer. The overlap in terms of the similarity is based on monetary compensation for the good and service or it being free.
Rag, I think you have to leave this blog. Get a life. You can’t post Trumpian, Ayn Rand comments here 20 times a day. You have no knowledge, no respect for others, and you repeat yourself endlessly. You are a bore.
I think I am talking to a cement wall. No more. There is no reasoning with STUPID.
Lloyd Lofthouse, if you want to know what stupid is, go to California. That place is loaded with stupidity.
Ah, when someone sticks pins in your self-made voodoo doll, you get mean and reveal who you really are.
Ragnor’s Bhut (using the definition for the last four letters of his/her online Troll’s name that means he or her us a malevolent spirit by choice) said,
“Lloyd Lofthouse, if you want to know what stupid is, go to California. That place is loaded with stupidity.”
That is your opinion and it reveals that you are incredibly ignorant, biased, and prejudiced against anyone that does not agree with your programmed opinions. What lying misinformation, conspiracy-generator talking head do you prefer as your programmer: Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Hannity, Prager or another lying, hate-filled rabble-rouser?
Back in the late 60s and early 70s, I used to listen to Limbaugh when I was in the car, and he called his followers “ditto heads”. He often said that we did not have to think because he would do our thinking for us. He also challenged us to fact check what he said on his show and one day I did fact-check his endless allegations of Democrats. That revealed what a lying “bhut” he really was, and I stopped listening to him and started to fact check every allegation from the right and those allegations were almost always wrong and lies. In fact, what the extreme lying right claimed democrats were doing is what they have been doing all along to subvert this country and turn the U.S. Constitution into toilet paper.
If you want a definition of stupidity steeped in ignorance and lies look no further than every member of the Libertarian Party that also belongs to ALEC, every neoliberal, every neoconservative, every neo-Nazi, members of The Gathering, and everyone that will still vote for Trump in 2020, et al. Also, look in a mirror.
ragnarsbhut: “If someone wants to go to college, he or she should take responsibility for that choice.”
That is obscene. Our country is falling behind in the intelligence/knowledge department because people who could contribute to society don’t have the means to get educated. If other countries in the world can provide free college education to their people, what in the world is wrong with the United States? Egypt, Kenya, Turkey??? They can.
Good grief. Your stinginess is loathsome. Nobody should graduate with a debt, especially since there ARE NO DECENT GOOD PAYING JOBS.
May 20, 2019
About 69% of students from the Class of 2018 took out student loans, graduating with an average debt balance of $29,800, according to Student Loan Hero.
These are the countries that offer free tuition to its own residents, but there are also a number of countries that offer free tuition to international students. In many cases, college courses are available for free but they are taught only in the country’s native language. All nations that offer free college to international students are:
Brazil: Classes are taught in Portuguese
Czech Republic: Classes taught in the Czech language are free
Finland
France: Free classes available to European Union citizens
Germany
Greece: Classes are taught in Greek
Iceland
Kenya: Free tuition available to high-scoring secondary school students
Luxembourg
Norway: Tuition is fee but living expenses come at a very high cost
Panama
Slovenia: Free education for EU citizens
Sweden: Free education for EU citizens
JSON
Country
Free Tuition (Citizens)
Free Tuition (International Students)
Population 2020
Argentina Yes 45,195,774
Austria Yes 9,006,398
Brazil Yes Yes, but classes are taught in Portuguese. 212,559,417
Czech Republic Yes Free tuition in the Czech language, not free in other languages. 10,708,981
Denmark Yes 5,792,202
Egypt Yes 102,334,404
Finland Yes Yes 5,540,720
France Yes Available to all European Union (EU) citizens. 65,273,511
Germany Yes Yes 83,783,942
Greece Yes Yes, but classes are taught in Greek. 10,423,054
Iceland Yes Yes 341,243
Kenya Yes Free public tuition for high-scoring secondary school students. 53,771,296
Luxembourg Yes Yes 625,978
Malaysia Yes 32,365,999
Morocco Yes 36,910,560
Norway Yes Yes, but living expenses are high. 5,421,241
Panama Yes Yes 4,314,767
Poland Yes 37,846,611
Slovenia Yes Available to all EU citizens. 2,078,938
Spain Yes 46,754,778
Sweden Yes Available to all EU citizens. Ph.D. programs are tuition-free. 10,099,265
Turkey Yes 84,339,067
United Kingdom Yes 67,886,011
Uruguay Yes 3,473,730
Many Eastern European countries are missing but they all have free higher ed. In Germany, even Americans can go to college for free. In Denmark, not only you study for free but you can also work (at most 20 hrs) to support yourself.
“That person has no right to demand that other people pick up the tab.”
Soon, they will have the right, as in most civilized countries.
Tax is not “other people’s money”, it’s money for all. People with more money contribute to taxes more in proportion than those with less money since they get more help that are paid from tax dollars: internet, roads, air traffic control, military, etc.
Mate Wierdl, I take it that you favor tax rates being progressive?
As a minimum, yes. But on top of that, more tax should be collected from entities the focus of which are manipulating instead of producing, like banks, stock market, televangelists, etc.
Although I have not belonged to any religion for almost 63 years, I do turn to the Bible and what that book says about what wealth does to people is a valuable lesson in why individuals should not have too much money and the power that wealth buys that corrupts them.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible about wealth is this one:
1 Timothy 6:9-10 ESV
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
And my second favorite passage:
Mark 10:25 English Standard Version (ESV)
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”
I’m not sure that passage is the proper interpretation into English from the original. I understand the original Biblica Hebrew uses a rope instead of a camel indicating that the rich person has to get rid of their wealth until they only have one strand (string left) of that rope left before they will be allowed to enter the kingdom of God.
Then there are the wise worse of Lord Acton. “Between 1837 and 1869 he was known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet. He is perhaps best known for the remark, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…”
https://www.acton.org/research/lord-acton
It is arguable that the damage the corrupted wealthy do to the rest of us outweighs the good they might do if they did anything to benefit anyone else but themselves.
Lloyd Lofthouse, if one wants to make moral arguments for the redistribution of wealth, I could buy into those. If one group makes the argument that another group would have too much money, that is a highly debatable point. Where is the incentive to work for what one wants if any monetary wealth they get is redistributed from the rich to the rest of us without our lifting a finger? This is the problem with welfare. People who get government subsidized welfare benefits are actually getting those at the expense of the rest of us.
The super rich have no incentive to work.
Someone who inherits billions of dollars at birth never needs to work.
Why aren’t you worried about their loss of incentive?
Diane Ravitch, where is the incentive to value a college education if it becomes free?
Did you know that all higher education in Finland is tuition free, and the Finns have one of the most productive ecominies in the world, with far less poverty than we?
Diane Ravitch, if people actually paid attention to the tuition costs, they would vote with their money.
My reply to your comment is all copied and pasted with a link or links. I don’t see any reason why I should come up with my own explanation when it has already been done. What I copied and pasted is a sample. Click the link and educate yourself if you have an open mind. If your mind is closed, then keep on preaching your ignorance.
“Successful Socialist Countries
“Some argue that there has been no completely socialist country that has been successful, only countries that have seen success in adopting socialist policies.
“Bolivia is an example of a successful socialist country. Bolivia has drastically cut extreme poverty and has the highest GDP growth rate in South America.
“Other countries that have adopted and enacted socialist ideas and policies, and have seen success in improving their societies by doing so, are Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.”
“Sweden is not a ‘pure’ socialist country. It has a free-market economy with very few government regulations, something that is a capitalist’s dream. Perhaps the lesson from Sweden is that both socialism and capitalism can co-exist in such a way that children have equal access to education, no matter their income, while workers can enjoy rights that are inferred to them by the company rather than the government.
“Swedish workers do pay more in taxes than workers in non-socialist countries, like the United States. The reason they do so is so that the government has money for generous social services, including maternity and paternity leave for new parents and the school voucher system. There is also more income equality in Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, than in the United States, because of how the government redistributes wealth.
“Finland runs on a free-market economy, something that is contrary to how many people perceive socialism. If your definition of socialism is heavy government regulation of business, then no, Finland is not socialist. In fact, government regulations are so low that Finland does not even have a minimum wage.
“The best way to look at Finland’s economy and politics may be to see it as a blend of capitalism and socialism. Some people refer to this as “compassionate capitalism,” meaning that markets can run freely, with minimal government regulation and interference; the role of the government is to ensure social welfare by providing generous benefits to the population through the revenue generated by taxes. Those benefits include free schools, including college, for all students and generous maternity and paternity leave for new parents.
“This model may seem like something that other countries should replicate. After all, who wouldn’t want a free market that has few government regulations, coupled with government benefits that ensure everyone is healthy and productive? The challenge is applying that model in countries that are less homogenous and have a significantly higher population than Finland, like the United States.
“Finland’s model may work so well because the country’s population is relatively small and homogenous. However, other countries may benefit from applying aspects of their economic and political system.”
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democratic-socialist-countries
Lloyd Lofthouse, thank you for the link recommendation.
“Where is the incentive to work for what one wants if any monetary wealth they get is redistributed from the rich to the rest of us without our lifting a finger? ”
Those whose incentive to work is to collect a billion dollars need to be treated, for they think it’s OK to collect money other people made.
I think it’s time for the “rest” to lift their middle fingers to those who take the fruits of their labor away.
Diane Ravitch, you are getting into the slippery slope area of thinking when you claim that someone who inherits billions of dollars will not work a day in his or her life. Some people may not inherit physical dollars. Some people may inherit a family business and want to keep it going. Lloyd Lofthouse, while I was out of line with some of my comments that were directed toward you, you did make yourself look and sound silly with the butt reference, instead of bhut, which is the blog domain. Carol Malaysia, the bigger threat to our way of life are religious radicals who want to kill us all, not wealthy people.
Your sympathy for hard-working billionaires is very touching.
How many weeks have gone by since I changed the spelling of your anonymous name from ragnarsbhut to Ragnar’s Butt? Why are you still carrying that self-inflicted burden around with you all this time later?
I still prefer Ragnar’s Butt over the way you spelled your anonymous internet name.
Did you know that Ranarok is from Old Norse Ragnarǫk, and literally means, fate of the gods, from ragna, genitive plural of regin gods + rǫk fate, course (later rendered as Ragnarøkkr, literally, twilight of the gods)?
And, the first known use of Ragnarok was in 1770.
All you did was drop off the “ok” at the end and add bhut.
Did you know that the definition of bhut means an especially malevolent spirit, ghost, demon, or goblin?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/butt
Why does it bother you that I changed bhut to butt?
Is it because I changed your meaning from a “ghost, demon, or goblin” to the base of a plant from which the roots spring (that is literally one of the definitions for butt – click the previous link to verify my claim)?
It seems to me that referring to someone as the base of a plant from which the roots spring is nicer than calling them a ghost, demon or goblin.
Lloyd Lofthouse, if you have ever eaten a Bhut Jolokia pepper, you would understand the bhut reference.
Off topic.
When is our government going to HELP people? I’m sick of the wealthy getting more and more and more while people are being kicked out of their homes. $1,200 wasn’t much and exactly how many months is that supposed to last? Many still haven’t received that skimpy amount.
My friend in Miami didn’t have enough money to get her taxes done for 2018 or 2019. She feels fortunate to have a part time job that pays $7.25 an hour.
…………………………..
We Are Barreling Towards a Food and Housing Crisis Unlike Anything Since the Great Depression
By Robert Reich,
Robert Reich’s Facebook Page13
July 20
A staggering 32 percent of American households have not made their full housing payments for July yet — up from 30 percent in June and 31 percent in May. That’s the fourth month in a row of “historically high” missed housing payments, a clear sign the economic devastation wreaked by the pandemic isn’t going anywhere, no matter what Trump and Republicans want you to think. Renters, who are more likely to work in industries devastated by coronavirus, are especially vulnerable — 36 percent of them missed their July housing bill, compared to 30 percent of homeowners.
Folks, this is bad. The temporary relief provided by the one-time stimulus checks has long evaporated, and the expanded unemployment benefits giving people a lifeline are set to expire at the end of this month. Local and state eviction and foreclosure protections will begin to expire sporadically across the country — some already have. We are barreling towards a food and housing crisis unlike anything America has seen since the Great Depression. The Senate must take up the House-passed HEROES Act and get Americans emergency relief, before it’s too late.
Lloyd Lofthouse, some people use pseudonyms because they are not comfortable advertising their names all over the internet. You may not have a problem with that, however, some people may adopt aliases to protect their privacy. Diane Ravitch, if someone has more money than another, however, neither person is financially destitute, what is the gripe with some people having more money? Carol Malaysia, if someone does not have the money to pay for college out of pocket, they can get student loans or apply for a scholarship. Some people can get free college by serving in any branch of the armed forces and have the free college as a reward. No person is entitled to free stuff by demand. Dienne77, no person has an absolute right to the wealth of another person, period. Máté Wierdl, while I believe that earned wealth should have greater value than inherited wealth, if someone inherits millions of dollars, that is not anybody else’s business, period.
“some people use pseudonyms because they are not comfortable advertising their names all over the internet [because they go out of their way to troll and/or bully others like calling them leftists or liberals as an insult].”
Lloyd Lofthhouse, the next time you read any books, check the author’s name and see if it is a real name or an alias. Diane Ravitch, I intended for my supposed right to a free cup of coffee point to illustrate the fact that demanding something for free does not mean that you will get it for free. Education is not a right. Most of the people who issue demands for free public college are just too lazy to pay for it themselves.
Education is absolutely a right. We could not function as a society without it.
Community colleges used to be tuition free. Some colleges, like the City University of New York, were completely free for decades.
We wanted to invest in our future and create the knowledge and skills to improve society. We don’t care anymore. Instead we invest in greed.
You, sir, don’t give a damn.
Diane Ravitch, just to clear up one detail, I had not intended for my right to a free cup of coffee example to be as literal as it was seen. The point I was making is that if one wants something for free that the person should do something to merit getting it for free. Example: A coffee shop has a buy 2 bags of coffee, regardless of their size, with bag #3 being free of charge. Why should someone weasel his or her way out of paying for the 2 bags if they know that the final bag was free of charge?
You say the same thing over and over. You don’t want anyone to have a free education or anything they don’t pay for. That’s enough. Go away.
Diane Ravitch, I did not say anything in objection to free education, just that the free education should come as a reward. Clearly you, Lloyd Lofthouse and Carol Malaysia are not listening.
Education is a basic human right, not “a reward.”
Any society that does not provide free education to its people as a matter of right is doomed to stagnate and go backward.
Now, please go away.
Diane Ravitch, clearly you are not comprehending what I am saying. I said that I have no objection to free education as a reward for someone who risks literal life and limb for his or her country. The problem is the fact that we have people who issue demands for free public college and are not willing to do anything to earn it. If anything, I would think that these people who issue demands for free stuff should be sent to military school.
Again, this is my last reply.
Did you know that community colleges all over the country used to be free?
Did you know that the City University of New York was completely free for decades and produced Nobel Prize-winning scientists?
The young people who attended free colleges and universities did not win a reward.
We invested in them as a nation because we understood that the minds of our people are our greatest natural resource.
We no longer believe that and consequently we are wasting our young people and squandering our future.
Now, please go away.
R’sBHUT keeps dropping by to drip, drip, drip about the same old issues on this blog as if RB is following a trolling schedule following a list. Let’s see, what Blog do I haunt today?
Each drop-in after an absence of days or weeks starts out with the same shtick, the same old issues that RB allegedly believes in focusing on the same old regular commenters here that made the mistake of relying on R’sBHUT during one of its previous visits.
What a total waste of time. Garbage in. Garbage out.
Diane Ravitch, we don’t have too many multimillionaires or billionaires. We have too few of them.
RG’sBhut says, “we don’t have too many multimillionaires or billionaires. We have too few of them.”
RGB should apply for a job to work for Trump. They think alike.
According to HowMuch.net, there are 2,095 billionaires worldwide. The U.S. has 614. That means the U.S. has more than 29-percent of the world’s billionaires but only 4.2 percent of the world’s population.
https://howmuch.net/articles/world-map-of-billionaires-2020
I do not know if having all those billionaires living in the U.S. is the reason for these two facts or not:
The U.S. has had 161,298 total documented deaths from COVID-19 out of 708,090 for the world. That ratio is almost 23-percent of the COVID-19 deaths that happened in the United States.
Could it be that having 29-percent of the world’s billionaires living in the United States is the reason the United States also has had 23 percent of the world’s COVID-19 deaths?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?%22
Second fact:
“Countries investing more in social programs have less child poverty”
Among OECD countries, the United States is 2nd from last for having the most children living in poverty, more than 20-percent, while countries with high tax rates for the wealthy and more social programs have the lowest child poverty rates.
https://www.epi.org/publication/countries-investing-more-in-social-programs-have-less-child-poverty/
Diane Ravitch, here is the following exchange between me and Lloyd Lofthouse: Me: “Lloyd Lofthouse, people who elect to leave wealth to living family members should not have to worry about half of that money, regardless of the amount, being redistributed to people who turn welfare into a career opportunity. The difference between people who turn welfare into a career opportunity and a person on his or her deathbed who leaves wealth to loved ones is that the person who earned that wealth busted his or her butt and welfare recipients are getting handouts and doing nothing.” Lloyd Lofthouse: “Stop changing the subject and ignoring all the facts and links I provided, Rangar’s-Butt. If you are not a troll, you are stuck inside a confirmation-bias bubble that you need to pop so you can open your mind and educate yourself about the facts you are ignoring that I have provided more than once. I am not going to do it again.” Me: “Lloyd Lofthouse, if you think I am wasting your time, then stop beating around the bush and just say it! Don’t get all huffy and act like a thin-skinned hotheaded fool!” Lloyd Lofthouse: “Ragnor’s-Butt thinks I am a hotheaded fool. It takes a fool to know a fool so hello Ragnor’s-Butt, from one fool to another. Now that we have that out of the way, go back to the comment where I provided all the evidence and links that you are wrong about everything you think.” Me: “Lloyd Lofthouse, are you one of those dunces who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 respectively? If so, that explains a lot.” Lloyd Lofthouse: “I’d rather be a “dunce” (according to someone that admitted they voted for TrumpThinSkin after their first choice, Ted Cruze, lost in the 2016 GOP primaries) that voted for Obama than an ignorant, deplorable, biased fool that voted for Trump.” Me: “Lloyd Lofthouse, the dolts who voted for Barack Obama got their wish. However, he fucked us over badly.” Lloyd Lofthouse: “Obama’s policies were not good for the public schools, that I know, but what do you allege that he did to “fuck us over badly”? Please provide a list with links leading to reputable evidence from primary sources. I want to see what you will come up with other than allegations without any evidence to support what you think. Since Trump and Fox News, Sinclar Media, Breitbart, Limbaugh, and OAN are not reliable, you cannot use any links that lead to those sites or any other right-wing talking heads that spew nonsense and lies.” I should not have used the f-word, however, you allowed my choice of word to be approved. After my comment about inheritable wealth, a comment that was rather generic, that was met with an unprovoked equivalent of a tongue lashing. All I did was make an innocent reference to his point on limiting inheritable wealth. Regarding my not wanting people to get something that they don’t pay for, unless something is provided free of charge voluntarily, nobody has any right to free stuff just because they cannot afford said stuff.
Lloyd Lofthouse, you claimed that you used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. Did it not occur to you that it was the media that was spewing lies and misinformation, not Rush Limbaugh?
Carol Malaysia, free college is not free in any literal sense. Regarding the lack of jobs with decent pay, Donald Trump was trying to fix that before the democrats and some republicans screwed up the situation for him. When Barack Obama was President, we had 93, 000, 000 people out of work. The same thing would have happened under Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, et cetera.
Mate Wierdl, democrats, republicans-they are all the same. Regarding some people’s advocacy of a progressive tax structure, do they really support that or have they been brainwashed into believing that it is a good idea?
Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77fdRWpV_-4 Nobody has any right to free stuff on-demand.
Carol Malaysia, want to know why the middle and lower classes have less money than the rich? Based on the fact hat they spend a lot more of it. If our tax code encouraged more savings and investment, we would have fewer poor people.
Diane Ravitch, until our national debt and unfunded and underfunded liabilities are taken care of, I am not interested in hearing people issuing demands for handouts. Self-made wealthy people don’t owe the rest of us anything.
Lloyd Lofthouse, are you familiar with David Pakman’s Show? Secular Talk W/Kyle Kulinski? The Thom Hartmann Program? The Young Turks?
Mate Wierdl, the progressive income tax is/was a plank in The Communist Manifesto. Who wrote that? Karl Marx. Progressives are closet Marxist who just wanted to relabel themselves in order to dupe us into buying into their agenda.
ragnarsbhut: If our tax code encouraged more savings and investment, we would have fewer poor people.
According to Thom Hartmann, the wealthy don’t pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes. Amazon paid no taxes even though the profit was in the billions. It’s impossible to save money when the current minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. [That is the minimum wage in my RED state. You can’t save or invest no matter how hard you try. Salaries this low don’t allow for even purchasing the basic necessities for survival.]
The inescapable truth about rightwing billionaires and Trump
Thom Hartmann
…Working class people earn wages and pay income taxes; people who inherited or married their money, and those who invest their vast fortunes, pay capital gains taxes on the money their money earns.
Wages are taxed at a substantially higher rate than capital gains. Donald Trump, in fact, lowered the capital gains tax and promised to lower it all the way down to 15% if he remains president after January 20.
Thus, those who inherit or marry their money pay the lowest income tax rate in the United States. Rightwing billionaires want to keep it that way, and Donald Trump promised them he will.
After all, it’s all about the money.
Similarly, there are two ways to pay taxes on your wealth, the stuff you own as opposed to the income you earn.
Working-class people, a majority of whom are homeowners (around 66%), pay an annual tax on their greatest source of wealth, their homes. It’s called the property tax.
Every single year over 87 million working-class homeowners pay a small percentage of the value of their main store of wealth — their homes — to the state.
It’s a wealth tax for the middle class that we refer to as a “property tax.”
Even people who rent pay “the working class wealth tax,” through their rent payments, which subsidize their landlords’ property taxes.
But what about people who’ve inherited or married their money, or even earned themselves billions, and put it in investments?
The majority of their wealth is not in their home(s); that usually represents only the tiniest slice of their assets, even when it’s a big, fancy mansion.
Instead, most of their wealth is invested. Think of it as sitting in a money bin, like Scrooge McDuck.
How much of a tax is there on those money bins, their investment portfolios? How much tax do they pay every year on their wealth?
It turns out there is none. No tax. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
They don’t pay a penny in annual taxes on their invested wealth, and only a pittance on their overall wealth which includes their homes and land. Their homes, the only items on which they do pay a property/wealth tax, represent only the tiniest slice of wealthy peoples overall wealth portfolio…
https://thomhartmann.medium.com/the-inescapable-truth-about-rightwing-billionaires-and-trump-3754f72882d9
I want to point out that most millionaires and billionaires don’t have their homes, yachts, cars, and planes in their own names like the working class.
The property the wealthy own is part of the corporation, LLC, or foundation the wealthy control.
I know someone that’s a millionaire. It is my understanding that her house and car are both held by her LLC. Her LLC earns a lot of money but she only pays herself an annual salary of $15k a year out of what her LLC earns. If she travels, she uses her LLC’s credit card, not a credit card in her name.
The LLC acts sort of like a tax shelter. Everything she charges through the LLC’s credit card is written off as a business expense.
Her corporate taxes are filed separately from her personal income taxes. Because she earns such a small amount, she pays little to nothing and is eligible for benefits meant for the working poor.
The LLC pays more than she does in taxes but at a lower rate than she’d have to pay if all of those earnings were taxed at the personal income rate. The LLC has more ways to reduce taxes through costs like the property tax her LLC pays on the house she lives in.
Yet, she lives in a house worth more than a million dollars that’s paid for (the corporation pays the property tax and I don’t know what that rate is) and drives a newer car.
“Self-made wealthy people don’t owe the rest of us anything.”
We can observe Bezos self-making himself wealthy when we visit one of his warehouses and see people doing boring, repetitive, stressful jobs for poverty wage. We can observe Gates self-making himself rich by running small competitions to the ground, taking over our education system so that he can sell his software designed to educate our kids while sitting in front of the screen all day long . We can observe the Walton family self-making themselves wealthy as we are served in one their Walmart stores by people who work for them while living in poverty.
We can observe these self-made wealthy people use the Internet, airspace, roads, military for their business for free of charge to self-grow themselves beyond comprehension, while the Internet, airspace, roads, military have been built from the taxes other people paid.
True, Marx already pointed out the obvious 170 years ago: if money accumulates somewhere, it has to be taken from somewhere.
Places like Finland or Denmark where the taxcode controls the bloodsucking activities of wealthy people are the happiest places on Earth. The US is not one of these places.
“Mate Wierdl, the progressive income tax is/was a plank in The Communist Manifesto. ”
Clearly, you never read the Communist Manifesto.
Carol Malaysia, want to know why the middle and lower classes have less money than the rich? Based on the fact that they spend a lot more of it. If our tax code encouraged more savings and investment, we would have fewer poor people.
Diane Ravitch, until our national debt and unfunded and underfunded liabilities are taken care of, I am not interested in hearing people issuing demands for handouts. Self-made wealthy people don’t owe the rest of us anything.
Lloyd Lofthouse, are you familiar with David Pakman’s Show? Secular Talk W/Kyle Kulinski? The Thom Hartmann Program? The Young Turks?
Mate Wierdl, the progressive income tax is/was a plank in The Communist Manifesto. Who wrote that? Karl Marx. Progressives are closet Marxist who just wanted to relabel themselves in order to dupe us into buying into their agenda.
RB, are you familiar with the difference between a cutthroat capitalist democracy and a cuddly capitalist democracy?
Also, I reject your rejection of any media site just because they are allegedly biased and you do not agree with that bias. What’s important is if those media sites are accurate in their reporting, not the loaded words they use that indicate bias.
Biased language sprinkled among factual reporting is not the same as fake news, lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.
First, there has never been a Communist country, not one. Why? They all failed because of the monsters that ruled them. Instead of becoming a socialist democracy, they became totalitarian dictatorships.
Media Bias Fact Check says this for questionable sources: “A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for the purpose of profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact checked on a per article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source.”
“For Communists the term ‘Communism’ meant both an international movement dedicated to the overthrow of capitalist systems and a classless society which would exist only in the future. What are generally known as Communist systems were called ‘socialist’ by the Communists themselves. …
“Bolshevik communism in the USSR/Russia began as a project of Westernization. For Lenin and Trotsky Russia was ripe for Westernization; it was something that needed to happen not merely for the revolution to succeed but for it to be thinkable. In his typically imperious style, Lenin decreed in 1918 that, it is our task … not to spare dictatorial methods in order to hasten the copying of Westernism by barbarous Russia even more than did Peter [the Great], not shrinking from barbarous methods of struggle against barbarism. (Lenin, 1965: 340) …
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/communism
What does Media Bias Fact check report about the previous site?
“Overall, we rate ScienceDirect 100% Pro-Science and Very High for factual information.”
What is the difference between communism vs socialism, vs capitalism?
“The main difference is that socialism is compatible with democracy and liberty, whereas Communism involves creating an ‘equal society’ through an authoritarian state, which denies basic liberties. … Communism is a political and economic ideology – closely associated with the state Communism of the Soviet Union and China.”
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/socialism-vs-communism/
Factual Reporting: HIGH according to Media Bias Fact Check.com
“America’s competitive capitalism vs. Europe’s cuddly capitalism: Which is better?”
https://www.aei.org/economics/american-capitalism-europes-cuddly-capitalism/
AEI.org is rated Right BIAS by Media Bias Fact check.com
“Cutthroat capitalism versus cuddly socialism: Are Americans more meritocratic and efficiency-seeking than Scandinavians?”
https://ideas.repec.org/p/hka/wpaper/2017-003.html
Then there is this piece: “Five models of capitalism” NOTE: Since I’ve only heard of two forms of capitalism, cutthroat vs cuddly, I thought this was interesting.
Besides analyzing capitalist societies historically and thinking of them in terms of phases or stages, we may compare different models or varieties of capitalism. In this paper I survey the literature on this subject, and distinguish the classification that has a production or business approach from those that use a mainly political criterion. I identify five forms of capitalism: among the rich countries, the liberal democratic or Anglo-Saxon model, the social or European model, and the endogenous social integration or Japanese model; among developing countries, I distinguish the Asian developmental model from the liberal-dependent model that characterizes most other developing countries, including Brazil.” …
“During the 30 years up to 2008, the neoliberals and neoconservatives who dominated the American state (whose model of capitalism was already close to their ideal) tried to extend their model to the rest of the world. But, in spite of all its economic power, all its military power, and all its soft power expressed in its prestigious brands, in its remarkable universities, in its popular music and in its movie industry, the ability of the United States to export its own type of capitalism proved to be limited.” …
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0101-31572012000100002
What I find interesting is that during the years that the U.S. taxed the wealthiest Americans at the highest ratios, the wealthy were still wealthy and the U.S. was paying off the debt it incurred fighting World War II. Then along came Reagan.
“What we learned from Reagan’s tax cuts”
“The Reagan tax cut was huge. The top rate fell from 70 percent to 50 percent. The tax cut didn’t pay for itself. According to later Treasury estimates, it reduced federal revenues by about 9 percent in the first couple of years. In fact, most of the top Reagan administration officials didn’t think the tax cut would pay for itself. They were counting on spending cuts to avoid blowing up the deficit. But they never materialized.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/12/08/what-we-learned-from-reagans-tax-cuts/
Lloyd Lofthouse, the deductions, credits, exemptions and loopholes are an influencing factor in the matter.
I have no idea what you mean. I doubt tjhat you even know what you wrote is accurate or not or what it means.
Diane Ravitch, in a few of my comments where I had inquired as to your thoughts regarding Thomas Sowell and his writings respectively, you did not seem to have a problem with either inquiry. Regarding my alleged rule violations, I technically violated 2. Not flagrantly, as you claim, however, I will admit to having done it. My Alex Jones and Infowars reference was meant as sarcasm in a sense, however, I find his ranting to be amusing. You violated your own civility rule because you attacked me after I tried to clarify the context for my coffee example, something that was in violation of your civility rule, as well as essentially giving Lloyd Lofthouse and Carol Malaysia license to do the same thing, Carol Malaysia by claiming that it is obscene to require people to be responsible for choosing to go to college and Lloyd Lofthouse by letting him off-the-hook for repeatedly, even if indirectly, calling me an a**. Mate Wierdl has been the only person to not throw any insults my way, nor me throwing any insults his way. Before things deteriorated in the conversation I was attempting to engage in with Lloyd Lofthouse over the matter of inheritable wealth, I did not change the subject. While I did use the f-word in reference to what Barack Obama did to us as a nation, something that was out-of-line, you allowed Lloyd Lofthouse to quote that phrase back at me. Regarding my not wanting people to get something they don’t pay for, here are 3 things: 1: You essentially said the same thing about my supposed right to a free cup of coffee. 2: When I claimed that free education should be a reward, you claimed that education is a basic human right, not “a reward,” which essentially misrepresented and took my comment out of context, a comment that was indirectly speaking of veterans whose educational benefits are covered by the GI Bill. Not once did I claim that education itself is/was a reward, something that would be perfectly obvious to you if you were willing to engage in an in-depth discussion and be willing to inquire as to the context for the phrasing. 3: Considering the fact that you asked me if I thought that veterans were freeloaders for getting a free college education, something they earned, how is/was their free college education not a reward? The taxpayers may pick up the tab, however, the veterans paid for their education with risk to life and limb. Earning something by definition is a reward, so that makes your point invalid in a sense. Now, I did not say that citizens in other countries that provide free (taxpayer-funded) college won a reward. Repeatedly, you have granted Lloyd Lofthouse special treatment by letting him call me an a** indirectly again and again. He initiated the insults, not me, so don’t flip-flop on the matter by insisting on civility from me and yet looking the other way when there is an expressed concern about a perceived lack of civility from other people.
Lloyd Lofthouse, unless you have digestive issues that keep you from enjoying the hotter stuff, you would not be able to understand the reason for the bhut reference unless and until you taste a Bhut Jolokia. Assuming you can stomach even a sliver, we can have a rational discussion on the matter.
Carol Malaysia, you claimed that I attacked everyone I responded to, including Diane Ravitch. Quite the opposite is true. I had not attacked Diane Ravitch, not Lloyd Lofthouse, at least until he got belligerent with me, not you and not Mate Wierdl. You all had each attacked me with the possible exception of Mate Wierdl. That makes your claim disingenuous.
Mate Wierdl, are you familiar with Milton Friedman? Thomas Sowell? F.A. Hayek? Walter Williams? If so, what are your thoughts on each of them respectively?
Curious, why were you so civil when you were leaving comments on one of my blogs. I don’t recall having any of the alleged problems you quote here.
Lloyd Lofthouse, when I made that reference to inheritable wealth, you called me a butt. My comment, while past-tense, was expressed innocently. I did not mean to start a war of words over it. You said something about limiting inheritable wealth. That was what my response was related to.
RB,
Please provide a link to my direct quote where I called you a “butt”. I also want the date and time that was posted.
I recall that you have referred back to my comment where you allege I called you a butt before. Why do you keep returning to that allegation?
There are many definitions of “butt”. If I called you a butt, what definition was I referring to.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/butt
Lloyd Lofthouse, here is the link: https://dianeravitch.net/2019/09/24/bernie-there-should-be-no-billionaires/ Here is the exact date: June 18, 2020 at 5:43 pm. Here are your exact words: “Stop changing the subject and ignoring all the facts and links I provided, Rangar’s-Butt. If you are not a troll, you are stuck inside a confirmation-bias bubble that you need to pop so you can open your mind and educate yourself about the facts you are ignoring that I have provided more than once. I am not going to do it again.” I only made a past-tense reference to your point on inheritable wealth, something that was on-topic in a technical sense. Calling me an ass, I think, however, you just used the phrase butt as a cop-out to stay in the good graces of Diane Ravitch.
How did you take that quote and turn it into me calling you a Butt? Is your real first name Ragnars and your real last name Bhut or is your real first name Ragnar and your real last name Sbhut?
Here’s the quote you used in your allegation that I called you a butt, “Stop changing the subject and ignoring all the facts and links I provided, Rangar’s-Butt. If you are not a troll, you are stuck inside a confirmation-bias bubble that you need to pop so you can open your mind and educate yourself about the facts you are ignoring that I have provided more than once. I am not going to do it again.”
If Ragnarsbhut is your internet alias and not your real name, then I wasn’t calling you a butt, I was deliberately demeaning that fake name
Tell me that Ragnars Bhut or Ragnar Sbhut is your real name. Since so many people that use the internet, especially trolls, use fake names, it isn’t to know when someone is using their real name.
However, it is easy for anyone to prove my real name is Lloyd Lofthouse. I do not use a fake name on the internet to hide behind. I have no reason to use a pseudonym to hide.
Anyone that hides behind a fake name does not deserve respect. I even googled both names: Ragnar Sbhut and Ragnars Bhut and All I can find is Ragnar hlsited under Viking history.
There is no way for me to find out either way. Until you come out of your internet closet and reveal who you really are by revealing your real name and where you live, et al, you are just another alleged troll hiding behind a fake name.
Diane Ravitch, you claim that people who want to go to college but could not afford the tuition costs should get to go for free. People who cannot afford the tuition costs who don’t want the burden of student loans should just not go or work their tails off to earn the money to go. No matter how rich anyone is, we have no right to their money. They earned their own wealth and they should be able to do whatever they want with it. Stop asking for handouts. Regarding my not wanting people to get something that they don’t pay for, wanting anything on-demand without paying for it is theft and people who want other people to pay for it are just being lazy. No one in America should have to give up one dime for someone else’s kid(s) to get some higher “education” that isn’t even necessary for survival. Regarding rich people inheriting massive wealth and poor people being entitled to poverty, people who are on street corners asking for money are just being lazy, as is the case with people who want college to be free because they are unable to afford it. Nobody is owed or entitled to free stuff on-demand. You got sold on the idea that going to college will make you a success story? Try explaining that to Bill Gates and other wildly wealthy people who have no college degrees and no debt by default. College is expensive because the government entered the loan business. Get the government out of guaranteeing student loans and the tuition costs will go down. First question: What entitles you to a free college education? Second question: Why should anyone’s student debt be “eliminated” since they agreed to that student loan? Third question: How is it the wealthy peoples fault your college tuition is so high? Forth question: Why haven’t you demanded your college or university lower costs and raise wages? And last question: Why is it the federal governments responsibility to control colleges and universities?
Carol Malaysia, your debts, as well as those of millions of other people who take them on voluntarily, should not be covered by the taxpayers. Stop crying about things that you brought upon yourself. Don’t be a moocher. Why are we brainwashed to believe that college is a necessity? Many of our nation’s top earners either never went to college or are college dropouts. When are people going to realize you have to pay your own way? If your earn a lot of money it’s yours. Stop being such cry babies and take responsibility for your own actions in life and stop blaming everyone else for your problems. Higher education only produces lobotomized foot soldiers who parrot Marxist anti-capitalist rhetoric. First question: What entitles you to a free college education? Second question: Why should anyone’s student debt be “eliminated” since they agreed to that student loan? Third question: How is it the wealthy peoples fault your college tuition is so high? Forth question: Why haven’t you demanded your college or university lower costs and raise wages? And last question: Why is it the federal governments responsibility to control colleges and universities?
Lloyd Lofthouse, not that I am a fan of his outside of the agreement with him ideologically, however, what are your thoughts on Glenn Beck?
Mate Wierdl, the progressive income tax scheme originated with Karl Marx. Did you not know that?
Oh, my dear god, ragnarsbhut is back with his usual BS.
“Mate Wierdl, the progressive income tax scheme originated with Karl Marx. Did you not know that?”
Yes, Marx certainly was a visionary, and hence your ideas have been obsolete for at least 170 years.
He was the evil genius, yes, that is sarcasm, who gave us the abomination of the federal income tax.
If there were no federal income tax, there would be no Social Security or Medicare or military. Are you ok with that?
Diane Ravitch, if I paid into the system, I should reap the benefits. Related to your rule violations, I only technically violated 2. 1 being the civility rule, the other being the no cursing. When I tried to clarify the context for my free coffee vs. free education analogy, there was a double-meaning at the time. On the one hand, it costs time and money to own and operate a coffee business and getting the necessary equipment to operate the business, just as it does to get a teacher’s certificate. On the other hand, there is the issue of Constitutional Rights. Using the 9th Amendment to indicate a belief in a right to education is something I will lend legitimacy to. Per the 10th Amendment, education should be a state issue. My free education being a reward reference was clearly misinterpreted. I was only responding to your question about veterans, hence the phrasing reward. Like you, I do believe that education is a right in the sense that we have the right to educate ourselves. The coffee example was actually sarcasm.
“Education is a right” makes only sense if everybody has access to it, hence it needs to be free. Presently, only those get education they want in the US who have the financial means for it.
Mate Wierdl, using the 9th Amendment as the basis for arguing that education is a right is something I can take seriously.
How Reaganomics Destroyed The Middle Class…And Maybe America
Dec 4, 2010
The National Debt went up under: Carter 41%, Reagan 186%, Bush Sr. 53%, Clinton 40%, Bush W. 77%.
Carol Malaysia, I have heard that argument before. That is pure rubbish.
ragnarsbhut, it takes one to know one and that means your thinking is allegedly “pure rubbish.!
This is a reminder. Your opinions are just your opinions. That means, you, like everyone else, is subject to being wrong.
In this case, I do not agree with your opinion on this issue.
Lloyd Lofthouse, before the somewhat heated exchange we had, I did not in any way attack you when I made a past-tense reference to your point on inheritable wealth. I was technically on-topic, however, in a past-tense context. Your Gravatar profile mentioned that you served in Vietnam. How exactly did that work out?
There you go again, Ragnar … changing the topic with a question.
The fact that I joined the U.S. Marines after graduating from high school and ended up fighting in Vietnam, has nothing to do with taxing the rich unless you want to talk about who made their fortunes manufacturing weapons, bullets, and bombs for the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Most if not all of the war-mongering fat cats that are rich because of those wars never serve in the military or end up in a war zone being shot at. People from the lower economic levels are the ones that mostly fight those wars. Then we come home and have to earn a living and pay consumption taxes. Hopefully, we earn enough so we do not end up homeless and hungry.
More evidence that the United States NEEDS a wealth tax.
Ragnar does that all the time, asking questions to change the topic. Ragnar does not debate. Ragnar passes judgment, avoids debate, and asks questions to change the topic and send someone else off on a wild goose chase doing research that only ends up with Ragnar mostly ignoring them and asking another question that changes the topic again.
Ragnar, here are the top three sites to debate topics with others. My suggestion is that you join all three and learn how to debate and stop asking questions that have nothing to do with the topic.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-sites-debate-topics/
Lloyd Lofthouse, you clearly missed the point. Both democrats and republicans are war profiteers. People like you and millions of other people throughout U.S. history who have fought, in some cases died during these wars are just meant to take the fall.
Well, saying something is rubbish is not an argument.
Perhaps.
Mate Wierdl, we don’t need an income tax to pay for all of the stuff we benefit from. Taxing consumption would be better.
Ah, who consumes more?
When I use the word consumed, I mean eating out, buying stuff like clothing, food, cars, et al, and paying rent or a mortgage payment.
The total number of millionaires in the US is 20.27 million. There are 788 billionaires in the United States. A new survey has found that there are 13.61 million households that have a net worth of $1 million or more, not including the value of their primary residence. That’s more than 10% of households in the US. – Jul 12, 2021
https://spendmenot.com/blog/what-percentage-of-americans-are-millionaires/
The other 90% of households are occupied by people with less than a million, but they still eat, shop, pay rent or have a mortgage, et al.
I have no problem with a consumption tax. But, there has to be a wealth tax, too. The more you earn, the higher your tax rate.
It is a fact that rich people tend to hoard their wealth and the working class spends almost everything they earn.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart
That is why this country NEEDS a high wealth tax rate for the wealthiest 10%.
Lloyd Lofthouse, here is an idea I would like to get your thoughts on: Replace our current tax code with a consumption tax and to make up for lost revenue have a slightly higher estate and capital gains tax.
My thoughts: The United States NEEDS (do you hear my shouting?) to bring back Eisenhower’s wealth tax rates.
Eisenhower proved higher tax rates could work
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/15/bernie-sanders/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/
No one, and I repeat, no one should be allowed to have more than one billion dollars in gross worth before taxes. Money buys influence and in the last few decades, we have witnessed what many of the ultra-wealthy do with their money to support a kleptocracy in the U.S. instead of the Constitutional Republic the founders created.
Between 1837 and 1869 he was known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet. … He is perhaps best known for the remark, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…”, which he made in a letter to an Anglican bishop.
Lord Acton was right. Anyone that thinks the rich should keep most if not all of their wealth is wrong.
Lloyd Lofthouse, here is a video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9QhR4mkx4 Kyle Kulinski and Jesse Ventura both agree with you.
I agree. There should be a wealth tax.
Diane Ravitch, in my opening comment, I had made an inquiry as to your thoughts regarding Thomas Sowell. I noticed that you did not take offense to the question. Why is that? Because my question was generic and was perceived as an innocent curiosity?
I knew Thomas Sowell many years ago, when I was a conservative. After I saw the errors of my ways, we parted company. I don’t think he is well-positioned to opine about schools today. I doubt he has been in a public school for 50-60 years.
Diane Ravitch, I tend to lean conservative. Having said that, I like the libertarian ideas more.
The “libertarian ideas” are part of (maybe even basis of) the conservative agenda nowadays.
Mate Wierdl, if you can present me with credible evidence that libertarian societies are doomed to collapse, I will be happy to look it up.
I don’t think libertarian societies are “doomed to collapse.” Rather, I believe they are doomed to create vast inequality and human misery among the masses of people, while piling privilege on those who are already privileged. The beneficiaries are the 1%.
Diane Ravitch, a hypothetical scenario: An almost perfect libertarian society can exist and there is peaceful coexistence among its members, however, some people disagree with other people’s choices as to personal activities, such as gambling. As long as there is no legislating that issue among other things, I see no reason why a non-aggression principle is a bad thing.
A society of ants or sharks don’t collapse, but it doesn’t mean we want to live like them. The human criterion of a good society is the one which provides happiness to all people. Happiness and great economy can coexist as the the example of the Scandinavian countries show. The experiment with libertarianism to provide happiness to all has failed badly, hence it’s senseless to promote this outdated idea here or anywhere.
That makes sense. What are your thoughts on the capital gains tax and the estate tax?
Diane Ravitch, the error of your ways technically took place by defecting to the enemy, being the democrats. Libertarianism is the most sensible political philosophy.
Lloyd Lofthouse, if you had any people who you would like to see debate economic issues on both sides of the aisle, who would you say would be the most interesting options, past and present, given the opportunity?
Carol Malaysia, regarding student loan debt, people who sign up for the loans know what they obligated themselves to. The fact that they want to abdicate that responsibility indicates laziness.
Mate Wierdl, people who promise free stuff to us should look at the financial states of each country where that has been tried. Insofar as I know, they are going broke.
Libertarianism is a political dogma that abandons all social responsibility. In a world governed by libertarians, old people and sick people would die in the streets. There would be no Social Security or Medicare, no communal efforts to improve the lives of others. Not for me. I support Medicare for All and free community colleges.
Diane Ravitch, on the free college being a reward comment that I made, that was taken out-of-context and came across in a way that was not intended. That comment was in relation to your question about my thoughts regarding Veterans being freeloaders for getting a free college education. I was making a distinction between education being a right, which it is when it comes to educating oneself and how Veterans paid for their education with risk to life and limb and got their free college as a reward due to the GI Bill. Back to my cup of coffee analogy, I was only using that as a means of stating the fact that it costs time and money to grow, roast the beans and then sell the coffee whole bean or by the cup. Of course nobody has any right to a cup of coffee in any literal sense, so that was actually meant as a joke. Nothing more, nothing less. Related to the Infowars vs. New York Times comment, I did not violate your no conspiracy theory rule. The point was that both sources have limited credibility in my opinion. Both are b.s. sources for the most part. I just findAlex Jones to be more entertaining. When I expressed a certain degree of disdain for some of the comments that Lloyd Lofthouse directed at me, it started after I mentioned his point about inheritable wealth. The expressed sentiments on my part were generic at the time.
Would you take away GI benefits from veterans who had an office job in the US?
Not at all. As far as tuition-free college goes, I would have no objection to STEM degree pursuits being tuition-free. Other than that, if the pursuits are in the arts, I think that they should pay.
We live in a democracy (I hope). Run for office and campaign on a platform of canceling Social Security and Medicare and all government entitlement programs. You would not get 1% of the vote.
Diane Ravitch, student loan debt relief to some degree I can support. Example: Someone takes on $150, 000.00 in student loan debt. I would not mind 50% of that debt being cancelled and helping with debt relief for the students who elect to pursue degrees that will benefit their potential career paths. Example: Medical school. That would help the person in that pursuit of that degree and relief of some of their debt would be one thing that I would advocate for.
There you go again, Ragnar, asking another damn question that leads to another Ragnar sinkhole.
“Lloyd Lofthouse, if you had any people who you would like to see debate economic issues on both sides of the aisle, who would you say would be the most interesting options, past and present, given the opportunity?”
I refuse to be sucked into another Ragnar sinkhole that leads nowhere so I’ll let this answer that question.
“The question libertarians just can’t answer”
“If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?”
https://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/the_question_libertarians_just_cant_answer/
Ragnar alleges that “Libertarianism is the most sensible political philosophy,” but that is based on false logic without any evidence since no country on the planet has been ruled exclusively by libertarian ideas and the few that experimented with libertarianism all ended up with disastrous results/
“While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling.”
The Failed Libertarian Experiment in Chili
Richard Eskow, Campaign for America’s Future / The Zero Hour, joins Thom Hartmann. Believe it or not – there actually is a real-life Galt’s Gulch populated by real people who hate the government. This real life Galt’s Gulch is in Chile – and surprise, surprise – it’s a colossal failure.
Lloyd Lofthouse, Somalia is one example of a libertarian paradise that some people bring up.
ragnarsbhut: Somalia is no paradise.
………………….
Top 10 Facts About Life Expectancy in Somalia
There are many things about the country of Somalia that make it unique. It is the country located in the most eastern part of Africa, it has been gripped by two decades of conflict and is one of the few regions on Earth where many people still opt to live a largely nomadic lifestyle. Due to these factors, the country also faces unique problems. Life expectancy is a reliable way to track the status of the country’s people, and a variety of points contribute to that number. In the article below, the top 10 facts about life expectancy in Somalia and all the aspects that are influencing them are presented.
https://borgenproject.org/top-10-facts-about-life-expectancy-in-somalia/
Carol Malaysia, the health care systems are part of the problem.
So, you define libertarianism as anarchy.
From Libertarianism.org:
“Anarchism and Libertarianism: two sides of the same coin” … “The similarities that connect libertarians and anarchists are nevertheless apparent.”
https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/anarchism-libertarianism-two-sides-same-coin
“With Somali piracy very much in the news in recent weeks and months, now is the perfect time for those who are inclined to do so to make fun of libertarians. Somalia, you see, has been without a central government since 1991, when Siad Barre’s dictatorship crumbled. Since libertarians promote statelessness, the argument goes, we must love Somalia. At the very least, we should all vacation there. …
Dislcaimer. This pull quote above came from an OpEd. Op-Eds are not news and often, if not always, are biased because it’s an Op-Ed. In an Op-Ed, facts that support the opinion or bias are what counts, not the source or the opinion.
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/09/090515-3.htm
The one phrase that sticks out and explains libertarians in a nut shell is “Since libertarians promote statelessness, the argument goes, we must love Somalia.”
A friend of mine served in the US Marines for 4 years and then in Special Forces as a medic for another 9 years. His team was sent to Somalia shortly after the incident known as Black Hawk Down. You should read his memoir and focus on the chapters that go into detail about what happened while his Special Forces team was serving there. Then you will know exactly what it’s like to live in a country without a powerless or nonexistent government.
Somalia: Counting the cost of anarchy
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12285365
“A libertarian, as he or she does not agree with the government that exists, believes the system has to be fixed to suit his or her views of the world. An anarchist, on the other hand, does not believe that the system can be fixed. So, he or she wants to abolish the system once and for all.”
https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-libertarian-and-vs-anarchist/
There is a movie by the name Black Hawk Down. I saw that one and some other war movies. Getting our politicians, those who serve in the Armed Forces and those who did not, to watch war movies and the carnage that is described should get them to catch a clue and think about the war they will put us through. Regarding the Iraq war, that was a colossal s**t show. We should never have been there to begin wth.
Ragnar, there are many wars this country should not have been involved in, but that isn’t going to change the fact that the US has been at war for 227 years since 1776.
That history of war and violence probably explains why the US is the world’s number one weapons merchant.
“The United States remains the largest arms exporter, increasing its global share of arms exports from 32 to 37 per cent between 2011–15 and 2016–20. The USA supplied major arms to 96 states in 2016–20, far more than any other supplier.”
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/trends-international-arms-transfers-2020
I wonder what the reason is for the US also being the number one porn producer. “The global leaders in porn are the U.S, taking a 60 per cent share of global internet pornography,”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2397058/Internet-porn-map-world-reveals-US-Holland-Britain-largest-providers-world.html
Weapons and porn have been growth industries in the US for decades.
Lloyd Lofthouse, do you think the drug war is a fruitless endavor?
Government run programs like Medicare for All would help everyone in this country. Some Republican politician wanted to cut food stamps because it would force lazy poor people to go to work.
Is Somalia a country that we are supposed to emulate?
Undernutrition is an underlying factor in one-third of deaths before age 5 in Somalia. According to the Global Hunger Index, around 50.6 percent of the population has insufficient access to calories. However, this number is down from 67.7 percent in the year 2000.
“Mate Wierdl, people who promise free stuff to us should look at the financial states of each country where that has been tried. Insofar as I know, they are going broke.”
No, they don’t go broke, and people are happy. As I said, look up what’s happening in Finland or Denmark.
Mate Wierdl, watch the video I linked in full about college students wanting top earners to pay for their tuition. Neil Cavuto explains it in full detail.
There should be no billionaires!
Whatever.
There should be no billionaires.
The estate tax would fix that.
There would still be billionaires with an estate tax since it is a tax levied on the net value of the estate of a deceased person before distribution to the heirs.
There shouldn’t be any self-made billionaires, period, and when someone worth less than a billion but more than a million dies, ninety percent of that dead person’s wealth should go to pay off the national debt or be applied to rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.
Lloyd Lofthouse, I would be more reasonable, maybe a 30% tax on anything above $5, 000, 000.00 would be reasonable.
When it comes to the very rich, there is nothing reasonable. The majority are greedy for more and more is never enough.
Then that corruption leads them to want power and then more power because exercising their power to corrupt the system allows them to have even more wealth.
That is why there should be no billionaires!
So you say.
So I say based on what I have learned about too many very wealthy people and what they do with their wealth to manipulate our political system.
ALEC is a perfect example of how some extremely wealthy people use their wealth to manipulate our political system, something that the working class can’t afford to do. If you are a member of the working class, you may be able to donate a small portion of your earnings to the candidate of your choice while a multi-millionaire or billionaire has the wealth to donate a lot more or to fund a Super Pac to support a candidate without donating any money to that candidate’s campaign.
Learn the difference between a Pac and Super Pacs.
I have heard the argument that spending money is equivalent to expressing speech. If that is true, current campaign finance laws should be Unconstitutional.
Oh, yes, let the richest buy all elections.
Carol Malaysia, I had inquired as to whose situation you would be inclined to take more seriously: A person who said that his or her family was having a hard time putting the kid through college or a person who said that his or her family is starving and they actually are. There was a degree of hyperbole there, however, people who have a hard time putting food on the table have no business worrying about college pursuits.
Diane Ravitch, the free cup of coffee reference was intended to be humorous. Nothing in that was meant to be literal.
Lloyd Loser House, yes, I am demeaning your real name by substituting a fake name, all of your “fact checking” stems from a bunch of b.s. sources.
Mate Wierdl, Bernie Sanders’ promoting free stuff is only meant to buy the votes of the uneducated.
Ragnar, prove that your opinion matters by proving from reputable sources, not the opinion of apparent loser/s, that my “fact checking” stems from a bunch of b.s. sources.
Because they are b.s. sources.
It took a while for me to stop laughing and catch my breath.
“Because they are BS sources” is not proof of anything except the opinion of one person that uses Ragnarsbhut to identity itself.
I was curious yesterday so I looked up the meaning of Ragnar and Bhut and came up with an interesting answer.
Ragnar as a boy’s name is of Old Norse origin, and the meaning of Ragnar is “judgment warrior”.
Definition of bhut
India
— an especially malevolent spirit: GHOST, DEMON, GOBLIN
So if someone sees themselves as a judgemental warrior and malevolent spirit, that explains why he or she would use an internet identity of Ragnarsbhut, and dismissing the validity of sources based on his/her judgment as “BS” fits the alleged profile.
Lloyd Lofthouse, as I claimed, unless you have ever tasted a Bhut Jolokia, something I myself have done, you will never understand the Bhut reference.
The five sources our alleged malicious judgmental warrior dismissed as “BS” were:
Overall, we rate Libertarianism.org Right-Center biased based on free-market economic philosophy and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.
quebecoislibre.org is pending a review by media bias/fact check.com, and for that reason, I provided this Disclaimer. This pull quote came from an OpEd. Op-Eds are not news and often, if not always, are biased because it’s an Op-Ed. In an Op-Ed, facts that support the opinion or bias are what counts, not the source or the opinion.
Overall, we rate the BBC Left-Center biased based on story selection that slightly favors the left. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information.
overall, we rate DifferenceBetween.net Least Biased based on neutral wording and Very High for factual reporting due to excellent sourcing.
I save for last the memoir from a Special Forces medic who served in Somalia with his team, and you lumped that memoir in with your “BS” comment, you judgmental malicious alleged warrior.
Lloyd Lofthouse, I am willing to engage in and have a rational discussion with you about things, as has been indicated in my comments on your blog. If I have any Left-leaning sources I will look at for information, I will look into Thom Hartmann, David Pakman, The Majority Report w/Sam Seder, Secular Talk w/Kyle Kulinski and The Young Turks. If you have any familiarity with any of them, who do you think is the most enlightening?
Reagan’s trickle down economic program was centered on massive tax breaks for the oligharchs and their respective corporations and industries. The reasoning provided at the time was that these corporations would take that new found wealth and use it to “expand production” and “generate more jobs”. We now have the luxury of looking back over the decades since then to see that this never happened.
What did happen was that those elites took their massive tax breaks and either sent the money to off-shore, tax-free bank accounts, or sent it off-shore to create jobs in lower wage countries, or used it to purchase competitors, or used it to set up non-profit organizations which were then manipulated to increase the profits of donor corporations. The Bill and Meinda Gates Foundation is a prime example of the latter. All of this has left average Americans who worked their butts off to create that wealth for those elites, bereft.
I’m very aware of how Teflon Don’s policies have all but destroyed our country. In addition, it was Nixon and Reagan that empowered the deplorable racist mob that’s now known as Trump’s mindless MAGA minions by recruiting them into the Republican Party when LBJ, a Democrat, was responsible for the short-lived success of the Civil Rights Movement.
ragnarsbhut: I totally disagree with you.
…people who have a hard time putting food on the table have no business worrying about college pursuits.
The world depends upon the best and the brightest to pursue their ambitions. It is not only the wealthy who should be able to go to college.
Sometimes very bright children are in poverty level homes. They should NOT be held back because of lack of finances.
Each person should be able to go to college if they have the abilities to succeed.
This is not FREE STUFF to promote votes of the uneducated.
Carol Malaysia, you had claimed that I attacked everyone I responded to, including Diane Ravitch. I had not once attacked you in any of my comments in which your name came up, not Diane Ravitch, not Lloyd Lofthouse until he got aggressive with me following my addressing his point on inheritable wealth and definitely not Mate Wierdl. Please reread Lloyd Lofthouse’s comment on inheritable wealth and then read my response to it. Then read his follow up.
Carol Malaysia, sure it is. Bernie Sanders is as much a b.s. artist as Alex Jones is.
ragnarsbhut: There is NO comparing Alex Jones and Senator Bernie Sander. Alex is a blowhard who makes hatred and ignorance prosper so that he can make money selling junk products. List what Alex Jones supports.
………………………..
Sanders was the lead sponsor on the original 2017 Medicare for All bill, which many progressive Democrats have since signed onto.
In January 2019, Sanders wrote an op-ed for The Guardian titled, “Trump’s economy is great for billionaires, not for working people.” In the op-ed, he writes that billionaires and large corporations should pay their fair share in taxes, that the U.S. should expand social security programs and lower student debt, and that we should create jobs by investing in infrastructure.
Sanders said, “No financial institution should be so large that its failure would cause catastrophic risk to millions of Americans or to our nation’s economic well being.”
All in all, Sanders supports comprehensive immigration reform and wants to protect DACA recipients, writing in 2017, “I will do everything I possibly can to protect these people from being thrown out of the only country they have ever known.”
Sanders has been historically pro-choice and has been vocal about wanting to end the gender pay gap.
The Washington Post reports that Sanders has also co-sponsored legislation, called the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would make it illegal for employers to come after workers who ask about wages.
Sanders supports a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and expanding background checks.
When interviewed by two Parkland students in 2018, he said, “There’s no one there who’s going to tell you that they’re not outraged by school shootings. But I really do think it comes down to the power of a very powerful interest, this is the NRA. And whether, in this case, mostly Republicans, will have the courage to stand up to them. And some will.
Carol Malaysia, since anything can be used in an assault, anything could be deemed an assault weapon. You come across as very well thought-out in your comments that I have read, however, you are way off-base if you believe that Bernie Sanders’ ideas of free stuff is designed to do anything other than pander to us.
Not everything is an assault weapon. An assault weapon fires many rounds of deadly bullets very rapidly. An AR-15 is meant to kill many people very rapidly. An AR-15 is not a rolling pin or a knife, both of which can be used to kill.
Diane Ravitch, what is your solution: Give government all of the guns?
There should be no billionaires!
Says who?
There should be no billionaires.
Perhaps.
Perhaps there should be no one worth more than $100 million. Perhaps every CEO’s annual gross earnings should be pegged to the lowest-paid employee in his or her company and be limited to 100 times what that individual earns annually.
If the lowest-paid employee at Walmart earns $11 an hour. and works only 20 hours a week for 52 weeks, the CEO of Walmart would be limited to earning $1,100 an hour for 20 hours a week x 52.
Currently, the CEO of Walmart is earning $22.574 million annually. He should be earning $1.144 million instead. If that CEO wants to earn more, he has to give all of his employees a raise so whoever ends up the lowest employee is earning a lot more. Then the CEO also earns more.
Since greed is a part of our nature, I am unsure as to how doable it is.
Greed exists but it is not part of everyone’s nature.
But the filthy rich are filthy with greed and they never have enough. No matter how many houses, cars, private aircraft, and yachts a filthy rich person has, they can only use one of them at a time.
Meanwhile, the majority of the working class struggles to make ends meet, keep a roof over their heads and eat.
The welfare state is part of the problem.
It is correct that there is a welfare system in the United States but the social safety net that supports the working class is not part of the REAL welfare system since the working class pays into Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment.
True welfare is known as corporate welfare that hands out tax breaks and/or subsidies to corporations and many very profitable corporations pay no income tax because of this corporate welfare.
Corporate welfare makes up about 25 percent of the annual U.S. tax code, a huge subsidy that not only supports some …
Report: Trump Received $885 Million in Tax Breaks for His New York Empire
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/report-trump-received-usd885-million-in-new-york-tax-breaks.html
Lloyd Lofthouse, I never claimed that people who are in poverty are sitting around and doing nothing. I was referring to people who want free stuff because they allegedly can’t afford the things they want.
Education or healthcare are not on a market in properly civilized countries, hence they are not a matter of affordability. Not everything should be on sale. Business is not some kind of beneficial activity which should permeate and direct all parts of life. Confining business to its proper place has worked out well in many countries, while letting business roam free every parts of life has not been working out anywhere. Hence it’s not clear why anybody would listen such outdated idea. You might as well try to promote the benefits of feudalism or the inquisition here or anywhere where the betterment of humanity is investigated. You’d induce the same annoyance and pity in those places.
ragnarsbhut; Where is your list of the things that Alex Jones is promoting? I gave a list of what Bernie wants.
Bernie works to get a government that does more than help the wealthy accumulate more wealth and material things. Does anyone really need 10 yachts or huge mansions all over the world while people are being evicted from their homes and are starving?
Carol Malaysia, he has some health supplements that he promotes on http://www.infowarsstore.com. Bernie Sanders is all talk/rhetoric and no action. You come across as being well thought-out in your comments, however, Bernie Sanders’ ideas are impractical given the current financial state that we are in.
There should be no billionaires!
Stay on the topic.
There should be no billionaires.
Ragnarsbhut tends to get everyone that responds to him/her to run in circles answering his/her endless questions. Asking a question takes seconds. Thinking and learning about one subject can take hours, days, weeks, months … Why do all that work when it only takes seconds to ask a question that changes the topic and repeat that topic without end?
For instance, the original topic of this post and the thread that’s attached to it was “there shouldn’t be any billionairs.”
How many times had ragnarsbhut avoided and/or changed that subject with a question in this thread or every time ragnarsbhut pops up on this blog?
That’s a logical fallacy called a Red Herring
Ignoratio elenchi
(also known as: beside the point, misdirection [form of], changing the subject, false emphasis, the Chewbacca defense, irrelevant conclusion, irrelevant thesis, clouding the issue, ignorance of refutation)
Description: Attempting to redirect the argument to another issue to which the person doing the redirecting can better respond. While it is similar to the avoiding the issue fallacy, the red herring is a deliberate diversion of attention with the intention of trying to abandon the original argument.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Red-Herring
I paid more in federal taxes than Bezos. Why should a retired teacher pay more in taxes than one of the richest men in the country?
…………………………………….
Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, took a 10-minute vanity joyride to space. As ProPublica recently reported after reviewing Bezos’s tax returns: Bezos paid zero federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011. And while his wealth grew by $99 billion from 2014 to 2018, he paid just $973 million in federal income taxes—a tax rate of less than 1% on that wealth growth.[1]
Amazon, Bezo’s corporation that fuels his astronomical wealth growth and his space flights, paid ZERO federal income taxes between 2017 and 2019 while it made $26 billion in profits.
Research done by Americans for Tax Fairness found that if Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax was implemented, Bezos would have owed $5.7 billion in taxes in 2020. Elon Musk, another space fanatic, would have owed $4.6 billion.[3]
Under Warren’s wealth tax, billionaires alone would pay $1.4 trillion in taxes over 10 years.
If Alex Jones had lived 150 years ago he would have traveled around with a horse-drawn wagon selling his patent medicine with a medicine show. It is cheap junk that brings in millions for the Snake Oil Salesman.
Diane Ravitch and Carol Malaysia, here is a video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8QY0NDWqzk Unless people who go to college know in advance what they want to study, college is a waste of time, money and brainpower.
“Unless people who go to college know in advance what they want to study, college is a waste of time, money and brainpower.”
This time it is my turn to call BS on your ignorant opinion that I have quoted above, Ragnor.
Many college students are not ready to make that kind of decision before they start college and it is not a waste of time because the first two years do not have to focus on a specific major. Instead, the early years in college are designed to be explored to allow time for most students to decide what they want to focus on. Some decide college isn’t for them and find another way to earn a living. Some decide early, some later.
And that makes sense since the rational part of the brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so, explaining why most college students are not ready to rationally make that kind of decision.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892678/
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708
In my case, I changed my mind three times until I settled on the field that I earned my BA in and it took me five years instead of the so-called four. I also started college later than most college students because I went into the Marines out of high school and didn’t reach college until I was 23. By the time I was almost 26, I know what I wanted to major in.
That scientific fact about brain development may also help explain why the average college student takes six years to earn a four-year degree.
https://www.insightintodiversity.com/the-average-student-takes-six-years-to-earn-a-four-year-degree-some-states-schools-and-organizations-are-working-to-change-that/
Carol Malaysia, due to a complicated medical situation, college is not in my future. Even if it was, I would rather pay for it out of my own pocket. Handouts are of no interest to me. Student loan debt is on the student(s) that take on the responsibility.
Ragnar, you couldn’t afford to go to college today.
Diane Ravitch, even if I could, I would rather work my tail off and save the money for the tuition. Rich people don’t owe me any of their money to pay for my wants or needs.
Rich people don’t owe you money but they owe money to the federal, state and local governments so you can have clean water, police and fire protection, roads and highways, safety inspections of airplanes, and a thousand other things you take for granted. Why should you pay taxes when billionaires don’t?
Why should people subsidize K-12 education if some of them send their kids to private school?
There should be no billionaires!
Your comment is not relevant.
There should be no billionaires.
You are entitled to your opinion.
And my opinion like the majority of Americans is that the wealthy should be heavily taxed. But I want that tax to be extreme so no one ever becomes a billionaire.
“Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: Reuters/Ipsos poll”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-poll/majority-of-americans-favor-wealth-tax-on-very-rich-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1Z9141
That is all fine and good until all of the money for these various programs runs out.
The money for social safety net programs, updating infrastructure, and paying off the national debt will not run out if the wealthy are taxed heavily. If the wealthy are allowed to continue hoarding and growing their wealth, most of that wealth is locked up.
When they are heavily taxed and that money flows to the working class, instead of hoarding the money and watching it grow, that money gets spent generating more jobs and improving our country.
Talk about wealth redistribution by politicians is done to pander to us.
I suspect your education comes from talking heads. Who are your favorite BS artists?
Stop listening to those BS frauds and start learning facts from primary sources so you form your own opinions instead of crap, misinformation from someone paid to mislead and lie.
Did you know that you can earn a college degree from a reputable college online? This has been possible for decades. Since I earned my college degrees before the internet age, I didn’t have that opportunity.
When I was teaching (1975 – 2005), I taught in schools with extremely high child poverty rates. I’m talking about 70 percent or higher. The high school where I taught had 3,000 students and 70 percent lived in poverty. The last time I checked that ratio was up to 80%
That’s why I told my students that they could join the military and earn a college degree online and the military would pay for it while they were still serving.
I had one girl come back and visit after she’d been in the Air Force for several years while earning a degree from an accredited state university in California that was part of the Cal State system like San Diego State.
Now, if someone has a source of income to pay the college tuition without joining the military, they can still earn a college degree and stay at home. In college, students learn all about what primary courses are and the facts from those sources so they have an opportunity to learn how to think for themselves.
San Diego State University offers online degrees in:
San Diego State
Now in its 117th year, SDSU is the oldest and largest higher education institution in the San Diego region. With 50 percent of graduates staying in San Diego to pursue their careers, San Diego State has become a primary educator of the region’s work force. With such a deep connection to the community SDSU provides graduates with access to opportunities that complement and enhance the classroom experience. San Diego State offers a variety of online courses and certificates. To learn more visit SDSU College of Extended Studies.
https://www.calstateonline.net/Cal-State-Campuses/San-Diego-State
Best Online Colleges and Top Online Universities of 2021
https://www.bestcolleges.com/features/top-online-schools/
I am aware that online courses are available. The problem is the entitlement among people who only want free college on-demand.
“college is not in my future,” ragnarsbhut wrote.
Does that statement indicate that ragnarsbhut is young enough to have an adolescent brain and not a mature brain?
No way to tell.
“The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so. In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. … Teens process information with the amygdala.”
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051
Digging a bit deeper by clicking on Rangarsbhut’s link, I was taken to a WordPress blog that reviews hot sauce.
https://ragnarsbhut.home.blog/
November 16, 2018 by ragnarsbhut
Thanks for joining me! This is my first blog post on my brand new website. I plan to review hot sauces and this spring start growing many different styles of peppers, mild peppers, medium spiced peppers, hot peppers and sweet peppers. Please check back often, and send your comments and ideas my way.
A note on comments: Rude and overly belligerent comments that consist of profanity or insults will be deleted. Personal attacks against me or anyone else will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Appropriate comments are welcome and appreciated. Lengthy comments are welcome, as well as short comments.
Ragnar Snedeker
NOTE:
How old and mature is Ragnar Snedeker if Ragnarsbhut and Ragner Snedeker are the same person?
When I Googled Ragnar Snedeker, that search came up with no results, no images. How does one individual manage to stay that invisible?
College was also not in my future when I barely graduated from high school.
Snedeker wrote, “due to a complicated medical situation …”
This is about me, Lloyd: I almost died from a complicated medical situation as a child.
Before I was old enough to start school, my parents were told I didn’t have long to live due to a heart condition, and one doctor after another told my parents that they couldn’t do anything to save my life. My parents refused to give up and kept seeing different doctors until they found one that said he could save me.
Long story, short, I’m turning 76 in August so the doctor that said he could save me was right.
By the time I was 7 and under this doctor’s treatment, my mother was told by so-called education experts that I was retarded and would never learn to read or write.
My mother made liars out of those experts that said I was too retarded to learn to read or write, just like the doctor that kept me alive made liars out of all the doctors that said I couldn’t be saved when I was 5 years old in the hospital being kept alive inside an oxygen tent.
Soon after I turned 18, I went to see the doctor that kept me alive and asked him if I could live a normal life now. You see, part of my care was to avoid all physical activity, no sports, no exercise. At 18, I was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 125 pounds.
The doctor that saved my life and kept me alive said, yes, you can do whatever you want. He went on and said the last test indicated there was no sign of the virus that threatened to destroy my heart when I was s child. That treatment had included massive booster shots every other day for a long time. I don’t remember how long but it felt like forever. I grew up hating needles and still detest them but that didn’t stop me from getting two jabs of the Maderna vaccine.
I took the doctor’s advice and did what I wanted. I joined the U.S. Marines. Soon after high school graduation, I reported to MCRD. Before the end of Bootcamp, the Marines put thirty pounds of muscle on my thin body and I wasn’t frail and weak anymore. Those months at MCRD were probably some of the hardest of my life, but I refused to give up.
College wasn’t in my future either. I didn’t want to go to college. My parents wanted me to go, but I hated school at that age. Imagine what life must have been like for that child growing up as he did, no sports, no exercise, always frail, tall, and thin like a straw.
My parents, thanks to the Great Depression, never finished high school. That’s why they wanted me to go to college. They wanted me to have what they couldn’t have when they were my age struggling to survive.
As a Marine in combat, I changed my mind and after I got out with an honorable discharge I ended up starting college with help from the GI Bill and working part-time jobs.
It took me from 1968 to 1973, to earn my BA and the first two years of college were the hardest because I’d never been a good student as a child. I had to teach myself how to be a good student. The GI Bill only covered the first four years. To finished college, I had to take out students loans that were more than but close to $7,000 dollars and eventually I paid those loans off nine years after I graduated from college with a BA in journalism. I had to work two jobs to pay off that debt.
$7,000 dollars in student debt in 1973 is equivalent to $42,834.95 of purchasing power today.
Life would have been so much easier for me if the college had been free. Free college doesn’t mean free room and board. Maybe it does, but I suspect it doesn’t.
Free college probably means no tuition and textbooks are free, too.
I support free college for everyone that wants to go and that means no tuition and textbooks for the time it takes to earn a BA or BS degree. I do think that anyone that wants to earn a graduate degree should pay for that.
Lloyd Lofthouse, are you familiar with a medical condition called Epilepsy?
There should be no billionaires!
Irrelevant.
There should be no billionaires.
A wealth tax would fix that.
A 90% wealth tax on gross worth would fix that. There should not be any billionaires, ever.
What is Gross vs Net? Gross means the total or whole amount of something, whereas net means what remains from the whole after certain deductions are made. For example, a company with revenues. In accounting, the terms “sales” and of $10 million and expenses.
I am against the idea of a wealth tax.
And I am against not taxing the wealthy.
It works in Scandinavia and the wealthy are still wealthy enough to afford a much better lifestyle than the majority, but they are not filthy rich hoarding their wealth and craving more.
A wealth tax is double-taxation.
Ragnar,
Bezos, Gates, and the Waltons love your support.
Diane Ravitch, without a Constitutional Amendment, a wealth tax would be Unconstitutional.
No, what’s labeled as a wealth tax would not be unconstitutional since it is just a higher rate on a tax table for those who earn a lot of more. People that work that are labeled poor or middle also have a tax rate on that same tax table.
Watch the next video and learn what a tax bracket means. What’s some call a wealth tax is just a higher tax rate depending on how much someone at the top is worth.
A tax on savings would be Unconstitutional by default because it had been taxed before it hit the bank account. Why are Leftists so lazy and entitled?
We are taxed on our income in most states and at the federal level.
If we own property, we pay a property tax in most states.
When we go shopping to buy stuff, depending on where we live, there is usually a sales tax.
If we buy something from another country and have it shipped from that country to our home in the US, we may have to pay a use tax if we didn’t pay a sales tax on that purchase.
If we make capital gains on investments, we pay a tax on those gains when we cash in.
For instance, if I buy a house for $100k and sell it thirty years later for $500k after I deduct the cost of improvements on that house, I pay a tax on the capital gains I made from selling the house unless I reinvest those gains in another property that costs more than the one I sold.
Capital gains taxes are also collected when we buy stock for $1000, and sell it at a later date for a lot more, maybe $1,000,000.
A capital gains tax is not the same as an income tax. Capital gains are based on earnings from investments and property. Income tax is based on what we earn at our jobs. These are two separate income streams.
The next link leads to Investpieda to a piece that explains how the capital gains tax works.
If someone buys a stock and never sells it, they will never pay capital gains on that purchase. But when that person dies and their heirs inherit that stock or sell it, they will have to pay a tax on that inheritance.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capital_gains_tax.asp
“Estate taxes are paid out of the estate, off the top, before any money is distributed to heirs. Inheritance tax is paid by the beneficiary once the money has been received.” … The tax is generally a percentage of the value of all the property inherited, including money, real estate and personal property.
Estate tax and capital gains tax are double-taxation.
No, a wealth tax is not double taxation. What’s known as a wealth tax is a higher rate for higher earners.
To understand how a wealth tax works, just look at the Eisenhower tax rates before Reagan’s flawed and misleading trickle-down economy theory lowered taxes for the rich and dramatically increased the national debt.
After watching that video, you might understand that the rich are not being taxed to the point where they lose all their wealth.
If Bezos had to pay a 73% tax rate on his current net worth of an estimated $196 billion, he’d still have almost $60 billion left to play with.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-net-worth-life-spending-2018-8
For comparison, let’s look at the middle class.
Pew defines the middle class as those earning between two-thirds and double the median household income. This Pew classification means that the category of middle-income is made up of people making somewhere between $40,500 and $122,000.
The most recent IRS data revealed that Americans who filed taxable returns paid an average income tax payment of $15,322 in 2018. This number was calculated based on the returns of over 153 million American households who filed during that period, which included just over 100 million taxable returns.
If a household earning $80,000 a year pays $15k in taxes, they have $65k left to live on and to pay their bills no matter how many live in that household.
But Bezos, even after paying a 73% tax rate because he was super-wealthy still has $60 billion to live off of and pay his bills.
Now, if I had a choice between being super-wealthy like Bezos and paying a 7e% tax rate or staying in the middle class living off of something like $65k annually, I’d rather be Bezos paying that 73% tax rate.
A wealth tax is not the same thing as an income tax in the way some people think of it.
You are not paying attention. Focus and learn something instead of parroting whatever you hear from your favorite BS artists known as talking heads.
Lloyd Lofthouse, are David Pakman and Thom Hartmann talking heads?
Lloyd Lofthouse, I hope that you are blessed with many more birthdays to come.
There should be no billionaires!
Perhaps.
There should be no billionaires.
Lloyd Lofthouse: There should be no billionaires.
You said that repeatedly.
Because there should be no billionaires. That is the topic of this post. A topic I agree with.
I know that, however, the fact of the matter is that billionaires got their wealth through capital gains, inheritance in some cases and by creating businesses that people want to patronize.
Still, there should be no billionaires!
Diane Ravitch, you come across as well-informed and very intelligent in your writings. The problem is that Bernie Sanders sold you a bunch of b.s. in exchange for your vote.
Carol Malaysia, in response to your claim that nobody should graduate with debt due to the lack of good jobs with decent pay, here is a video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJTGAtLH7Hw, a video which should be viewed by people who don’t get their way when they demand free stuff because they can’t afford it.
Lloyd Lofthouse, your precious Messiah Bernie Sanders is as much a b.s. artist as Alex Jones is. The only differences are related to ideology and due to Alex Jones being a news story reporter/political commentator/conspiracy theorist and Bernie Sanders being a politician.
Mate Wierdl, before 1913, the income tax was temporary or nonexistent. I believe in liberty and freedom, not free stuff and handouts.
Promise you will reject the government services that are funded by taxes.
Diane Ravitch, I have no problem paying taxes in order to get the benefits I receive. The problem is the lazy people who clam to be entitled to free stuff because they can’t afford it. Beyond K-12 education, nobody has any right to a free higher education on the dime of the taxpayers. Educating oneself is a right.
“Lloyd Lofthouse, your precious Messiah Bernie Sanders is as much a b.s. artist as Alex Jones is. The only differences are related to ideology and due to Alex Jones being a news story reporter/political commentator/conspiracy theorist and Bernie Sanders being a politician.”
The topic in this threat is “There should be no billioanres”. Why are you off-topic, AGAIN?
Since you are throwing out empty allegations without evidence, prove that Bernie Sanders is the same as Alex Jones. If you cannot prove it with primary facts from reliable sources, then it is you that is full of BS.
Bernie Sanders, regardless of what he says, is bought and paid for by corporations.
Yet you defend the billionaires who run the corporations! You should be on Bernie’s side.
Diane Ravitch, I like Bernie Sanders’ positions on health care, foreign policy, education to some degree and social issues. If there was a libertarian equivalent to Bernie Sanders, I might cast a vote for said person.
“Lloyd Lofthouse, your precious Messiah Bernie Sanders …”
Bernie Sanders is not my “precious messiah,” but he is a much better person than Alex Jones will ever be, even if Jones self castrated himself, gave up his wealth, and took a vow of silence and joined a monastery in Greece where he’d live out the rest of his life praying for forgiveness.
My opinions did not orignate from Benrie Snaders. My opinions were in place long before I knew Bernie Sanders existed.
Again, the topic in this thread is There Should be No Billionaires, something that I have believed long before I ever heard the name, Bernie Sanders.
Lloyd Lofthoiuse, you clearly did not get the sarcasm in the phrasing precious Messiah.
Diane Ravitch, if you are concerned about billionaires buying off politicians, I can understand why you think they should be eliminated as a class. What is a problem with that thinking is that when they create products and sell them and make a profit that the assumption is made that they will sit on it and do nothing with that wealth.
I think Restless Bigfoots is the perfect name for a troll’s sock puppet name.
Here’s a pull quote from this post:
“This is what Bernie sent out today, and I agree with his plan. I don’t think anyone should be a billionaire. A person should be able to get by on $900 million, even $100 million. Some manage to live well on even less.
“Many of our country’s billionaires are using their vast wealth to undermine and privatize public schools. One thinks of the Waltons, Gates, Broad, Hastings, Koch, Adelson, Anschutz, and that just scratches the surface.”
I agree with Bernie and Diane.
Tax billionaires until they are only millionaires. And use that billionaire wealth tax to pay down the national debt, or pay it off, fund college educations for those who can’t afford it, to help fund switching from carbon based energy to green energy, and fully fund social safety net programs like Social Security that’s already funded by the working class and their employers.
How many billionaires are we talking about in the United States, TROLL?
ANSWER: 756
Seven hundred fifty six.
How many millionaires are there in the United States, TROLL?
ANSWER: 24.5 million millionaires.
How many children live in poverty in the United States?
ANSWER: 11.6 million
How many adults live in poverty in the United States?
ANSWER: 27.9 million
What is the best way to leave poverty behind?
ANSWER: #1 Getting a sound education
https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/overcoming-situational-poverty/
Stop worshiping 756 billionaires, Restless Bigfoots! They way many billionaires are spending their money to influence what’s going on in the United States and in the world, in ways that only benefit the 756 in the billionaire class is evidence that they must be taxed into the billionaire class.