ST “disappeared” your petty banality, you really should learn to argue like an adult and be civil Colon.

At least I have one…snort!

It cracks me up. Every Wed the state workers here in CA wear the purple shirt with “Solidarity” on it not knowing the Marxist lingo that it is I guess. Or they don’t care.

- Are there cases of excess, and unearned largess. Of course. But building an entire campaign of class hate on those extremely rare exceptions to the rule is like trying to explain life on earth by eating a big Mac.

- Bang

I am not arguing against public spending. I’m saying spending HAS gone up for over 6 decades every year (as opposed to the message from liberals that it hasn’t – that isn’t the truth). And I’m saying that it is a irrelevant argument to what leads to prosperity more than government spending.

1) Stability – National Defense and law enforcement and the courts and enforcing the rules based on the constitution
2) Safety – National Defense
3) Non-punitive tax rates that don’t punish people who work hard and succeed only to give almost the same income to those who are lazy. That would be almost communism and it doesn’t work everytime because who would want to work for the same amount as the lazy?

Yet, where would many wealthy entrepreneurs be today without taxpayer investment in the Internet, transportation, public education, legal system, the human genome and so on?”
Those Collins profiled in the report say their success is attributable to many factors, among them public schools and colleges, government investment in research and small business assistance, contributions of employees, and strong legal and financial systems.
The idea behind the report is to point out what often gets lost in translation in the definition of success and to lobby for continued investment in public programs.

Who in the heck is calling for no continued investment in public programs KC? And taxes and spending are TWO TOTALLY separate items. It is evident through many instances in history that tax rates can go up while revenues drop and tax rates can go down while subsequent revenues go UP. Spending in this country has gone UP in health, education, social services, veterans benefits and education EVERY year for over 6 decades and just because 2,000 millionaires sign a document doesn’t mean they understand economics and doesn’t mean they know the truth past all the brain washing from the legacy drive by media that makes everyone believe programs are cut by Bush and Arnold and Reagan. It simply isn’t and wan’t true that any budget was cut. Spending is and has been up every year.

Of course government spending helps the economy. So does lower tax rates. What these millionaires seem to be are …. liberals…

I disagree. There is a great logical reason. Movement of capital is the essential ingredient towards having a prosperous economy and low unemployment.

To shine the light. Let’s look at what would happen if the capital gains rate was 100%. Nobody would invest because there would be no incentive to do so. Without investment there would be much less growth as companies wouldn’t have the capital to invest into new plants and infrastructure improvements. So should the tax rate be the same rate as income taxes? Depends. Which rate. There are several brackets of the progressive tax code. However if you look at investment income as earned income what the leftist writer fails to understand is that other investments would have a greater return over years. The capital gains tax is already pretty high but if raised to 36% like the top earned income tax bracket people would see less reason to invest that way and might put more money in other investments. Money ALREADY in investments would be kept there and there would be LESS movement of capital which is harmful to this country. Movement of capital is what takes money from the rich and gives it to workers much better than giving it to the government. It is better for the capital to be moved into jobs than DEPENDANCY.

I know it is a difference in perspective but I do hope you understand that I view it as BENEFICIAL to the poor to have lower capital gains tax rates. It’s an easy call as subsequent to capital gains rate reductions the federal government has a wash of revenues coming in because capital is released as people sell and take advantage of the lower rates. So the government benefits and as the money is used for other investnents (movement of capital) jobs are created big time. Lowering capital gains rates are actually a faster way of improving the economy than lowering income tax rates because lowering income tax rates are better for long term growth. Both in tandem are very good for the economy as there are MORE income earners and good for the government as government revenues grow with a growing economy as they did in 2004 (14.6%) and 2005 (15%)

So, rich people, who the article admits most made their money not inherited it (putting to the lie another leftist belief), didn’t do it themselves, it was all on account of “society’s” (read liberal/socialist) programs like schools and college, etc.

Hmmm…let’s see. The people at XEROX PARC, when presented with their own people’s research for GUI based operating systems, e-mail, the mouse as a pointing/input device, and object oriented programming, sat on their hands and did nothing as the didn’t recognize the potential. People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, recognizing the potential, developed products, putting their own wealth (such as it was in the beginning, meaning their own dollars at risk) and putting in grueling hours of hard work, developed it into a multi-billion dollar industry, and became billionaires.

But, it’s all because someone else did something? Well, without the invention of the microprocessor, I doubt they would be computer giants today, but that totally misses the point. It’s their spirit, risk taking, and eye for opportunities that makes them successful etrepeneurs. If the government hadn’t spent the money to develop the microprocessor, and XEROX hadn’t developed their ideas that they then abandoned, I doubt that Gates and Jobs would be poor today, they’d have just found another opportunity that the mass majority of people were either too ignorant or stupid or uncreative to notice, or to lazy to work for, and wound up rich but in a different field.

What a dumb article, it attempts to paint all rich people as owing everything to socialist programs and nothing to their own creativity and ambition.

ST: Don’t play games with me. I could just as easily turn this around on you and say that since you’re part of the group who advocates “Compassion” and promotes the idea that we “Shouldn’t Hurt Anyone’s Feelings” that you would be “compassionate” enough not to “hurt the feelings” of someone you felt had a spelling problem. See how this works? Please don’t bring it up again.

KC: “I guess this thread has your attention – and apparently when I echo the tone of some of your regular posters here, it ruffles your feathers. Again, sorry.”

ST: Um, no. I specifically mentioned what “ruffled” my “feathers” and it was you referring to this blog’s archives as “backwaters” – with the clear implication that you were doing us a ‘favor’ here by showing up to educate us backward folk. You can give as good as you get, I have no problem with that, but don’t insult me and blog commenters on the whole with such implications. You insulted ME with that implication and you haven’t even debated me on anything. Yet.

- Well hell. Whats the left going to do now that that ones been totally made moot. So “yesterdays news”.

- Next they’ll be calling for every menber of Congress to “review” the program. Then it will be the need to publish every secret anti-espionage program in Time magazine.

- I just shake my head at how times have changed. If you would have even suggested that National secrets should be published openly back in the Reagan days, or before, you would have been laughed out of the room. Just incredible. Scream our secrets to the enemy folks, because well the Liberals are “concerned”
Idiots.

- Bang

“Investors pay lower income taxes than workers. Roughly 85% of stock market wealth is owned by 10% of American households and there is no logical reason why income from those investments (called “capital gains” by the tax code) should be taxed less than income from work. But the top tax rate on wages is 35% while the top tax rate on capital gains is only 15%. This rate structure gives the richest households enormous advantages without producing any obvious social benefit. If we reversed the favor – and let workers pay lower tax rates than investors – then working families might have greater opportunity to accumulate wealth.

Historians point out that more people moved up into the middle class during the 1950s and 1960s – and American wealth was much less concentrated – when the top income tax rate was 91%, impacting salaries and capital gains equally. According to IRS data for 2000, most American households earned 70% of their income from work and only 10% from capital gains. But in the highest tax brackets, the situation is completely reversed.”

http://www.askquestions.org/articles/taxes/

Then says:
There is a big difference between the police requesting phone records for a suspect and the NSA storing CDR information on every call made within the US. As I’ve said several times, whether or not it’s legal (currently under debate), it’s obviously a huge violation of privacy.

First your saying the presdient broke the law, then you come back and say, well its currently under debate whether he did or not.

Make up your mind.

I know most Liberals are going around saying he broke the law, convict before you see proof, convict before you even get a trial or investigation.

Unless your Tookie, then it don’t matter you killed people in a grisly fashion, you should not have to serve your sentence because you wrote a book…a childs book…

Liberal mentality is sure a strange one I grant you that.

Here’s an interesting article for you on entrepeneurship:

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BB4FBCBBD-1278-4421-889C-1D4B7982B9C3%7D&siteid=google&dist=google

That my friend. Can’t be done by you. Because EVEN when the Washington Posts mentions a 50 Billion dollar cut or Clinton and CNN mention for 5 months in 1995 a 270 Billion dollar cut… the dirty little secret that liberal leaders fail to say to their liberal rank and file is that it isn’t a cut. It’s a decrease in the amount of increase. THe 50 Billion cut was actually a 7.4% increase as opposed to a 7.9% increase. The 270 Billion dollar cut was actually a 7% increase for 7 years (more than 49% compounded).

I once was a liberal so I know how difficult it is to be presented with alternative “facts” that are never heard on the legacy drive by media. I spent an entire year in 1991 going to the library 3 times a week. If you grow courage you can come to do the research and realize that this country is the MOST generous to it’s own people and we give more foreign aid than all other countries combined and allow more “legal” immigrants than all other countries combined and it has to do with our prosperity and compassion. But the prosperity isn’t accidental. It is due to the economic system of capitalism where entreprenuership is rewarded. Risk and hard work is rewarded with profits and success. Those who succeed do face taxes. The top 50% of income earners pay 96.54% of the income tax and yet liberals think it benefits the rich. The top 5% of income earners pay 54.36% of the income tax and the amount the U.S. federal government spend in general on health, social programs, education, anti-poverty, veterans benefits has gone up every year for 6 decades.

I guess this thread has your attention – and apparently when I echo the tone of some of your regular posters here, it ruffles your feathers. Again, sorry.