Ok, I didn't say that the government didn't produce anything valuable, what I said is that the government generates no wealth of it's own. The income of government depends entirely on seizing portions of income on businesses and individuals who do produce wealth.The government has no money of its own, only money generated by its subjects, money is generated by business and business is privately owned in America. Building a bridge does not generate wealth, the truck driver driving over it does, and he paid for that bridge with his own money, it's not like the bridge was a gift!
The US government is the people--we are not its subjects b/c we are governed by consent of the governed. The US gov.'s money is the People's money.
The Tennessee Valley Authority generated no wealth? The Civilian Conservation Corp added no value to the country. I would say that the creation of the Internet and the R&D infrastructure attendant to that creation (phone lines, electrification, satellites, software) would qualify as wealth generators. At least it was when the technologies were freely given to private business. That's an old trick: socialize the cost of doing business while privatizing the profits in the hands of a few.
All government is redistributive. That is its nature: to redistibute where resources are needed. If that bridge, from your example, was not created and maintained then there would be no truck driver making a living (oversimplification). The Public Interest demands solid infrastructure to function efficiently. Without it, privatized roads and bridges would spring up making interstate and intrastate travel an unworkable and expensive mess.
Government also gives grants for research. But just because the government helped discover the cure for cancer doesn't mean it created any wealth. After the cure is discovered a privately owned organization must hire people, build factories, develop distribution lines, spend money marketing, and then the cure for cancer generates wealth. The drug company generated the wealth, not the government, and the grant money the government provided came from the drug company to begin with in the form of the taxes it paid.
Governmental scientists do all sorts of R&D in many areas of study. The gov. doesn't only contribute to the process by subsidizing private research. There is also the nexus btn federal grants and state subsidized schools. I cannot deny that the Federal Gov, as an organizational entity, is an initiator and sustainer of productive and profitable work.
Enforcing property rights, consumer protection status, insuring banks, all this is made possible by money generated by businesses and individuals, and none of these things directly generate wealth, they merely facilitate the process. That is a very big difference.
That, or the government just borrows the money or prints more money.
As far as minting, printing money doesn't create wealth. If it did Zimbabwe with it's 11 thousand percent inflation rate would be the richest country on earth. Printed money only reflects the spending power of the consumer, you can't print more wealth.
I was referencing the minting of money as one of the many governmental duties to the people and not as a means of generating wealth. Government's role in maintaining the organization of this country is beyond question. We couldn't have each state/individual minting its/his own money. That would be bad.
Generating wealth is very specific, it is when you take money, invest and grow it. Government does not grow money, private organizations do.
Governmental agencies stocked with scientists, laborers, administrators cannot generate wealth? Is it the role of government to generate wealth?
I would say no. What is the role of government? To reallocate resources according to organizational principles reflecting the will and morality of the People. Can the Gov generate wealth? Absolutley. Look at the above examples. However government seems to be an enabler for wealth creation. Like you pointed out in your cancer drug example.
I guess there is something to a government by and for the people in this context.
With that said I ask you, yes the government does provide infrastructure, law enforcement, utilities (last time I checked people have to pay their water bills). But where did the government get that money in the first place? From the taxpayer, seized at the barrel of a gun.
Maybe the feds are gunning for you for nonpayment of taxes (I'm joking). Remember, our country was founded on Taxation with representation. We consent to be taxed b/c we have political representation (a say) in how we are taxed. No guns involved here. It certainly isn't theft.
Yes, but the government cannot do any of things without taking this money from tax payers. The government uses our money to provide services for us, you act like this is done out of some kind of generosity. I'm getting a feeling that you believe government owns all of the money in the country and they just generously hand it down to us. That thinking is completely backwards, we own the money, and we hand it down to THEM whether we like it or not.
There is no "THEM". It is WE THE PEOPLE who are the government. Now some of us may not like the way some of the money is spent, but at least we have our say. We can't win every battle, no one can, but there are times of victory.
This is like when I was forced by my local government to pay for my house being connected to a sewer system (I had no choice). According to your logic, I was given a gift by the government, even though I had to pay for it myself. Do you feel like you are giving your local grocery store a gift when you purchase your food?
I was in a similar situation with lateral hookups. What pissed me off more is that the locals don't want a concrete road where I live. So in the meantime, I have no concrete approach and a shitty blacktop road.
I was outvoted by my neighbors. As for your particular problem, you have to consider a few things. You live in a community. At some time, the civil engineers decided that the best course of action for sewage/sanitation was one system managed by the city. That's reasonable. You could embark on a campaign to change that, but your neighbors would likely vote you down.
We live in a free society. That freedom cannot be confused with license. We can't do whatever we please b/c of existing obligations/situations.
I'm assuming your referring to taxes rates here right? The idea that McDonalds worker are paying more in taxes than large corporations is ludicrous.
You have to be fair to me. The discussion was geared towards the tax rates paid by big corporations. My comparison, while true, was meant to elicit a sense of shame about the real taxes paid by the big corporations whining about tax rates...most of them pay nothing.
Yes corporations use all kind of deductions and loopholes to avoid taxation, as do individuals, but that doesn't mean that businesses don't pay any taxes. Your article here is referring to large corporations. Keep in mind 99% of private organizations in America employ less than 500 people http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oecon/chap4.htm
We were discussing corporate tax rates.
Now you see here that the VAST majority of Federal tax money comes from Individual Income Taxes, Payroll Taxes, and Corporate Income Taxes, a mere 5% come from from Excise taxes and other sources. Keep in mind that the Federal Government collects over 3 trillion dollar per year.
I was not referring to the magnitude of taxes paid. You made a statement that the poor pay nothing in taxes. If they earn dollar one, they are paying taxes. That's a fact. And that was why I wrote what I wrote. The federal rev. for 2007 was less than 2.7 trillion dollars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state ...
I'll use Wikipedia data if you don't mind, I know college professors frown on it (only because it's too easy), but were not writing an essay here or anything.
You know that does piss me off too. Wikipedia is really pretty good. When I use it as a source, I'm not troubled by it. I have found some questionable entries, but on the whole, it's pretty good.
Sales tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States
California:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California
I'm not sure why you are providing all this sales tax data.
Sure they did, dividends tax (double taxation if you ask me), property taxes, sales taxes, capital gains taxes, payroll taxes (you know that your employer pays half of your payroll tax right?). Of course big businesses do avoid paying taxes, but they wouldn't really bother if America's corporate tax rate wasn't so astronomically high and complicated. The very article you posted suggesting lowering the Corporate tax rate in order to increase revenues, I agree with them.
Again, I was referencing your statements that Corporations pay high corporate taxes. Most pay nothing. The notion of other taxes is not lost on me.
Any tax at all is too much for many corporate CEOs. That's just not practical.
Also keep in mind that these corporations create tax paying jobs, ok ACME doesn't pay any corporate taxes, but it employs 100,000 people who pay income taxes. Really corporations are taxed on multiple levels, first they have to pay an income tax on their earnings, then they have to pay a dividend tax when they pay dividends to their stock holders, then they pay their employees, who in turn have to pay some of THAT money that was taxed before, as personal income taxes. It's like an assembly line of taxation! I'm personally for the FairTax, which is a national retail sales tax that replaces all other forms of taxation. Check it out, it's interesting! http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer
Yup, any time there is a taxable event, a tax can be charge.'
Sure it does, IRS numbers only reflect the number of people that filed taxes, the income they declared, and the amount of taxes they paid. You can see what percent of the burden each tax bracket shares and the top 50% pay 97% of all Federal Income Taxes. The bottom 50% pay 3%. According to IRS.gov numbers the top 1% earned 21.2% of the total amount of funds earned in 2005, yet they paid 39% of the burden. The bottom 50% earned 12.8% yet only had 3% of the Federal Tax burden which is by FAR the largest source of government funds in this country. How can you conclude that the poor have this huge burden? The numbers don't add up at all.
I was referring to corporate income tax and not personal income tax. I can see why you thought I was talking about personal income taxes. I used the Clinton era corporate top marginal rate of 39% instead of the current Bush rate of 35%. Sorry for the confusion.
...See my numbers in previous posts, American poor people live like kings compared to the average person in most of the world. This is not a myth, there is a ton of data backing this up.
Myth: Lots of poor people are fat… they're not suffering.
Fact: Fat has more to do with genes and past starvation than current nutrition.
Summary
Many of our stereotypes about fat people, besides being cruel, are myths. Recent medical research shows that being overweight may not be a sign of prosperity at all, but of past poverty and starvation. The body has natural defenses against starvation, and when it experiences enough of it, it slows down the body's metabolism to make less food go further. Because poor people are more likely to go through periods of starvation than rich people, they are more likely to trigger these natural defense mechanisms.
Argument
The above myth is an unusually cruel stereotype, but one that gets repeated with surprising frequency in debates on the Internet. It is an observation many people especially make about black people: "There are too many fat black people to believe they're suffering from malnutrition and poverty."
American society has a neurotic obsession about weight. It worships an ultra-thin "ideal" personified by gaunt models and waif-like celebrities. So intense is the social pressure to conform to this unnatural weight that 200,000 American women suffer anorexia nervosa each year from trying. (1)
The flip side of this neurosis is intolerance towards fat people. And when such people also claim to be poor, critics can -- and often do -- erupt in open hostility.
Like so many prejudices, this one is rooted in myth. Dr. Martin Seligman, an authority on obesity, writes: "Nineteen out of twenty studies show that obese people consume no more calories each day than non-obese people. In one remarkable experiment, a group of very obese people dieted down to only 60 percent overweight and stayed there. They needed one hundred fewer calories a day to stay at 60 percent overweight than normal people needed to stay at a normal weight." (2)
What's going on here? In 1995, Dr. Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University published the results of a landmark study that proved that the body has a "thermostat" when it comes to maintaining its natural weight. His research team recruited 18 people who were obese and 23 who had never been overweight. They were required to live at a clinical center while their diet and activities were carefully controlled. In volunteers who gained weight, metabolism was speeded up by 10 percent to 15 percent. In those who lost weight, metabolism was 10 percent to 15 percent slower than normal. (3)
In other words, when people fall below their natural weight, their bodies slow down metabolism to try to regain it. When people gain weight, it speeds up metabolism to burn it off.
Scientists have long known there is a significant genetic component to weight. Identical twins reared apart weigh virtually the same throughout their lives. (4) Adopted children do not resemble the weights of their adoptive parents, but they do resemble the weights of their natural parents, especially the mother. (5) Interestingly, thinness seems more inheritable than obesity, which suggests that social factors may play a greater role in obesity.
But does this mean that obesity is genetic destiny? Dr. William Bennett of Cambridge Hospital says not necessarily; he suggests that the thermostat "set point" for natural weight can shift gradually over time in response to external factors. For example, eating a high-fat diet tends to raise the set point, while regular exercise tends to lower it. (6)
Dr. Seligman argues that when a person is subjected to starvation repeatedly or over long periods, the body gradually adjusts by storing more fat in preparation for the next time. This would have been a crucial survival feature in early humans, when hunting seasons could alternate between feast and famine, not only for days but even weeks or months at a time. Natural selection would have favored those who could survive periods of prolonged starvation by storing fat more efficiently.
Interestingly, Seligman points out that the body can't tell whether starvation is voluntary or involuntary. If a person goes on a diet (a euphemism for starvation), the body's ancient survival mechanisms kick in: "The body defends its weight by refusing to release fat, by lowering its metabolism, and by insistently demanding food. The harder the [dieter] tries not to eat, the more vigorous these defenses become." (7) Seligman concludes that this is why all diets -- no exceptions -- are proven long-term failures, and why the weight loss is guaranteed to return in the following year or two.
The political ramifications of these findings are obvious. Poor people are more likely to go through repeated or prolonged periods of starvation, and the fact that they are overweight does not at all mean that they are consuming more calories than other people. Look at it this way: if they were eating more food than normal, their bodies would be burning it up faster to maintain their natural weight. A 1976 study illustrates this point dramatically. The researchers paid a group of prisoners to add 25 percent to their weight by eating twice their normal amount of food. The first few pounds came easily, but, surprisingly enough, there was no further weight gain. (
In light of these findings, the best response to any overweight person -- rich or poor -- should be open-mindedness and acceptance.
Endnotes:
1. America Anorexia and Bulimia Association, Newsletter, 1985. This statistic is widely misquoted as 150,000 to 200,000 fatalities, not sufferers. But fatalities actually number a few hundred per year.
2. Martin Seligman, What You Can Change and What You Can't (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993), pp. 177-8.
3. "Body Plays Weighting Games: Fat or Thin, Metabolism Adjusts to a 'Set Point'", San Jose Mercury News, March 9, 1995, p. 1A.
4. Albert Stunkard et al., "The Body-Mass Index of Twins Who Have Been Reared Apart," New England Journal of Medicine 322 (1990).
5. Albert Stunkard et al., "An Adoption Study in Human Obesity," New England Journal of Medicine 314 (1986).
6. San Jose Mercury News.
7. Seligman, p. 183.
8. E. Sims, "Experimental Obesity, Diet-Induced Thermogenesis, and Their Clinical Implications," Clinics in Endocrinology and Metabolism 5 (1976), pp. 377-95.
source: Steve Kangas
Ah the hungry nonsense, this is the most asinine movement I've ever seen. I'm an EXSS student, we are required to go into the health problems America faces quite extensively, the #1 problem we encounter here in America is obesity. The idea that hunger is a problem in the United States is delusional, people are either too fat or hungry, not both.
So the means tested Food Stamp program is a hoax alleviating a problem (hunger) that doesn't exist? I disagree.
The experts would also disagree with you:
• In 2006, nearly 37 million people (12.3%) were in poverty.
• In 2006, 7.6 (9.8%) million families were in poverty.
• In 2006, 20.2 million (10.8%) of people aged 18-64 were in poverty.
• In 2006, 12.8 million (17.4%) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.
• In 2006, 3.4 million (9.4%) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. Carmen DeNavas-Walt, B. Proctor, C. Lee. Income, Poverty, and Heath Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006.
I've seen estimates up to 35 million people live in some degree of hunger/malnutrition. If even 10% of that were true, it would be a scathing indictment of the riches country on earth. These hungry people do exist. Schools see them show up for class. Emergency rooms see them at their doors. They are not the figment of the imagination of liberal empathists or freeloders.
Now I agree that the poor have a malnourishment problem, but that is because of the poor choices they make. Calorie intake is NOT an issue for poor people in America at all, this hunger thing just drives me crazy, I remember hearing the criteria for "hunger" it was something ridiculous like: "missing one meal a week or month". Under that criteria, I suffer from "hunger", even though I'm 225 lbs and anywhere from 15-20% bodyfat and I take in anywhere from 3500 to 4500 calories per day. The criteria used for those worthless phrases such as "food insecure" are so vague and stupid. I'm sorry I'm very passionate about this, America has an obesity epidemic and some morons are claiming that Americans have a "hunger problem", stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.
By gov. standards I am considered wayyyy overweight b/c I weigh 220 and I'm 6'1". Instead of using a weight index, why don't you access the percentage of the population utilizing emergency food services, soup kitchens and other charitable handouts. You know, where the quality of food is shit but lifesaving.
Here's just a few articles dealing with this issue:
I will give them a look. Thanks.
They have way too much food, they get free health care, and they get free money in the form of tax credits (even though they didn't pay any taxes). All this and they don't have to do shit or pay hardly any taxes at all. They have it MADE.
Yes, it's one year long party for the destitute. Poverty affects millions of people in this country. Old people, kids, invalids, mental crackups and you seem to be wanting to drop the hammer on these people b/c they cost you some tax revenue. That's unacceptable.
Our own government states that over 37 million people live below the poverty threshhold.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty07/pov07hi.htmlAre some of them playing the system? Sure. Are you going to kill these tax supported poverty programs and risk sending a few million kids and old people to bed hungry or worse? I guess so.
American businesses pay a huge portion tax bill directly and generate the jobs that provide the income for the rest of it, they use infrastructure that they pay for already, plus they employ millions of people who in turn pay taxes. If businesses in this country didn't pay their "fair share" (who determines what a fair share is anyway?), then the Imperial Federal Government wouldn't be able to do a damn thing.
We the People through our electorate determine what a fair share is. American Business is also similar to government. Without the most important cog, the people, neither would exist. The problem with big business is that it tends to corrupt. It lends itself to oppressive monopolies. It tends to exploit workers for the bottom line. It tends to exhaust resources with no eye to the future. Remember child labor? Remember secondclass treatment for women and minorities? Remember Enron, Adelphia, Bear Stearns, the S&L Scandal, the Housing Scandal etc.
Big Business needs regulation by the government to ensure an even playing field...sort of like referees.
No, the American government is betraying its people by driving American businesses away and discouraging foreign businesses from investing here, with their stupid tax policies and wasteful spending. Businesses are not the enemy, government is. The sooner people realize this the better off we will be.
The government is not your enemy. You are the government.
You are not Big Business. You have no say in a private corporation. Of all business models, the modern corporation is easily the most fascist form: the top down control of the CEO, of a board of directors. The voiceless worker left to the whim of total authoritative control of the corporate management is a faceless voiceless plebe.
At least in government, you have a voice. In private big business, you don't.