Preempting the storm: RIP Margaret Thatcher

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Like all conservatives I have always been a fan of Thatcher. This particular speech has always resonated with me. Whenever I hear people moaning about the income gap I always copy her.

 

Thatcher nicked that phrase, it wasn't hers, and is just as nonsense now as it was then.

 

And your response is why liberals should never be put in charge of an economy.

 

Actually, progressives/liberals in Australia setup a banking system (namely the four pillars) that's the envy of the world, and the reason we didn't get poleaxed by the GFC.

 

Thatcher was extreme -- I am of the opinion that extremists from both sides may sometimes be necessary, but they often hurt people in their zeal. I prefer a degree of reality and moderation, though I admit to slanting quite a bit to the right.

 

Clearly. Calling Bull**** when a politician accuses a critic of wanting the poor to be poorer when said critic brings out the factually accurate growth in wage disparity during the politician's tenure is obvious evidence of why liberals shouldn't be allowed to run the economy. Snook, you aren't even making sense.

Face it, dude, Thatcher was not making a good faith argument. Instead of answering to the criticism directly, she elected to attack the critic. Granted, the critic was essentially arguing that this was a failure of Thatcher's economic policies, but he also gave Thatcher a perfectly good opportunity to explain why it wasn't a failure -- she could have argued that it was an undesirable side effect or argued that other intangible improvements in everyone's overall standard of living explained the wage gap, but she decided to accuse the politician who was trying to advocate for the lower and middle class of trying to keep the middle and lower class down. At best a person who chooses to employ this tactic does so because he/she is an ass****. More commonly, a person who employs such tactics is an ass**** that doesn't have a better answer.

 

Sorry, I completely disagree and your argument just continues to show how liberal economic policies are more based on class warfare and ensuring liberal hegemony than they are of economic growth. Allow me to explain. A common liberal complaint as thatcher's critic and your response show are to bemoan "the income gap". This is a useless statistic and as I mentioned above is all about class warfare.

If for argument sake a family of four can live comfortably on fifty thousand per year, then the goal of an economic policy is to try to get as many families of four to have an income of at least fifty thousand. If the uber rich are making a million or a billion it has no meaning has all that matters is the fifty thousand.

I will try to explain what thatcher said using different words. If the poor are making ten thousand and the rich are making one million ten thousand there is a gap of one million. If economic policies change and the poor are making eight thousand and the rich are making five hundred and eight thousand then the gap has closed to five hundred thousand. To a liberal this is progress. To people who understand math, economics, and common sense this is stupidity.

In conclusion, a policy that makes the rich richer is not inherently evil as long as it also improves the situation for the poor.

Edit: this is also a sad reflection of the times. Fifty years ago when people saw mr Johnson drive his fancy car up the hill to his fancy house people used to think " I want to be like mr. Johnson". Now they think "Mr. Johnson isn't paying his fair share". Now it is all about making him poorer. To me this is wrong and legalized thievery.

 

Tal, thanks for proving my point. Society has gone so far out of control that we automatically think the rich are evil and are rich because of the evil things they have done.

Let's hypothesize that Sam Walton (the founder of Wal-Mart) was the most evil son of a ***** that every lived. That he cheated on his taxes, and he drove smaller businesses out of town, and that he hated small children and maybe even kicked a dog or two. Before his death he was one of the richest men alive in the world. Now his heirs are still rich, but they no longer make the charts as they had to give a lot of that wealth to the IRS in estate taxes.

However, there is no denying that for all of his wickedness he created a company that is one of the largest employers of people in the country. His stores have also enabled many poor people to stretch their dollars further as his stores have the lowest prices. Now his children may be useless, but it is wrong to begrudge them the wealth they have inherited from their father's hard work.

I want to build on my example from my earlier post.

Year one poor person makes ten thousand and the rich person makes one million ten thousand. This causes and income gap of one million.

Year two we have two scenarios.

Scenario A- poor person makes fifteen thousand and rich person makes two million fifteen thousand with an income gap of two million.

Scenario B- poor person makes eight thousand and rich person makes five hundred and eight thousand for an income gap of five hundred thousand.

Liberals who believe they are the defenders of the poor would consider option A a failure and option B progress.

Conservatives (who actually do care about the poor) fight constantly for option A for the result is the poor have more money.

How people don't see this or choose to not understand it constantly baffles me.

 

You are trying to sell everyone the Brooklyn bridge here Snook. If you think for one moment that the majority of the rich "care for the poor" and "fight constantly" for the poor, I would say you should probably reschedule with your psychiatrist to have your prescription changed. You seem to smart to believe that.

 

Exactly. While Mr. Big Fat Cat may not personally care if the poor get richer, in order for him to get richer the economy needs to thrive, and that tends to help out the poor also.

If Rich equaled conservative, then someone needs to explain the Kennedy's, Pelosi, Soros, and a ton of other people. Or are they just somehow "enlightened"?

 

What would you call policies of ensuring tax breaks for the sainted rich while cutting programs for the poor then? Or for that matter, while we're on the subject of class war, what do you call it when Joe Millionaire deems it better for himself to eliminate union rights and take his workforce to places where widespread injustice and misery are the norm and he only has to pay them pennies on the dollar, far less than the wealth they produce?

I believe these examples are far more damaging versions of class war than your average liberal wanting the rich to pay more in taxes. I also believe conventional morality shouldn't be thrown out the window when it comes to economics.

You misunderstand liberals here. Most liberals don't hate them just because they are extremely rich, but that they are extremely rich and getting richer by paying their employees so little that they usually have to get some type of federal aid.

Putting workers into such a bad situation isn't inevitable, and I don't accept it as inevitable. It is a choice. Look at Costco, which liberals love- they make huge profits, but they also find it within themselves to pay workers a living wage, provide benefits, etc. Aldi's is the same way.

Liberals don't hate rich people because they're rich, or I would argue even at all, they hate their bad practices.

 

And I think only a fool or an ass**** tries to argue that a political opponent 'doesn't care about the poor,' regardless of his or her political affiliation. Liberals care about the poor, and they don't want the poor to be poorer. Conservatives care about the poor, and they don't want the poor to be poorer, either. Liberals, however, are alarmed by the growing wage gap. Conservatives are not. Hell, Snook, I never even endorsed the idea that the growing wage gap was bad -- I merely acknowledged that, factually, it exists -- and merely took issue with the fact that she launched an asinine personal attack against a political opponent instead of proffering an honest argument in defense of her economic policy and launching a fact-based counter attack.

Responding to criticism about the growing wage gap (which is still growing, as I'm sure you already know) by accusing the critic of wanting to make the poor poorer makes about as much sense as responding to criticism of a rise in child sexual abuse by accusing the critic of wanting to more children to be sexually abused. It's a stupid argument for stupid people.

By all means, feel free make a good faith argument about why our growing wage gap is actually symptomatic of a healthy or recovering economy, a necessary evil, or a statistic that doesn't tell the entire story, but please leave the transparent and ridiculous attack politics on right wing radio and Fox news where no one actually has to listen to them.

 

Nice to see that you have dared to venture out of your echo chamber again Snook! Welcome back!

 

No, they wouldn't because the poor just got poorer. You know, I wish I knew more about economics. Because I just don't "get" some of the arguments you hear. For example, when I hear people talk about raising the minimum wage, they say it will cost companies many jobs. Why? Why wouldn't the cost of these extra wages be passed to the consumer? For example, if they raised the minimum wage by a dollar, wouldn't McDonalds just charge an extra 10 cents for every burger they sell to make up the difference? They wouldn't lay off the fry guy and stop selling french fries...

And here's a corrolary to the argument as well. Since minimum wage isn't a living wage, many of the working poor still rely on social programs to get by. Things like food stamps. (I find it especially ironic for something like McDonalds and many other restaurant workers - they make food for other people but can't afford to buy food for themselves and thier family.) Who pays for that? The tax payers of course. Wouldn't increasing their wage make them less reliant on social programs? Wouldn't tax payers rather pay an extra quarter for a happy meal?

And I hate the statement you hear that 47% of the population doesn't pay taxes. It's true that 47% of the population do not owe any federal income tax. But it's not like federal income tax is the only tax that's out there. If you have a job, you pay into Social Security and Medicare. Most states have state sales tax, so if you buy anything other than groceries (and in some states clothing) you pay tax on that. Most states also have state income taxes, and many municipalities have local taxes in the form of either county or city taxes. If you are fortunate enough to own a home, you pay property tax. There's a tax charge on your phone bill, and your electrical bill, and your water bill. Don't take my word for it - just look at the line items in your next bill. Pretty much everyone pays taxes somewhere along the line.

Also to get back to the wage gap, I don't think that the very rich pay enough in taxes. Someone making $100K per year is making more than 90% of the country, but he is closer to the wage earnings of someone in the 1st percertile than he is to someone in the 95th percentile. Likewise someone in the 95th percentile is closer to someone in the 1st percetile than he is to someone in the 98th percentile.

It's not that I have anything against the rich, but I don't feel like they pay their fair share. Here's another scenarios for you: Most people think it's fair that the heart surgeon making a few hundred thousand dollars per year pays a lot more taxes (in both absolute dollars and as a percentage of income) than the factory worker. The doctor makes 10X as much, so he should pay more. But then how is it fair that the heart surgeon making a few hundred thousand dollars per year pays the same percentage in taxes as the CEO making millions of dollars per year? The CEO is making 10X what the doctor is making.

 

To get back on topic. Is anyone else but me disappointed that the US didn't deem the funeral important enough to send a representative?

 

It's interesting. It has been stated openly and is implicit to the argument of several of the posters in this thread, that attempting to pay as little in taxes in possible is somehow ethically flawed, or even "bad."

Why is that? I will assume, in this case, we are talking about Americans working and living in the U.S. who must pay income taxes to the government. Why should they feel bad about attempting to pay as little as possible?

1) It was through their effort that they earned this money. Someone used the example of a heart-surgeon. She worked hard enough throughout her life to generally be one of the top students in any class she was in; if she attended an Ivy League or "IL-Like" institution she did much more than just that (in terms of beefing up her resume, like volunteering in her community and likely participating or leading her peers in a litany of things in order to demonstrate her high potential for achievement--I remember the kid in my school who went to Harvard who played sports he wasn't really good in and didn't really like probably just so he could legitimately have it on his application). She went to advanced (i.e., post-high-school) schooling for something like 10 years and along the way likely took out tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans in order to achieve her professional status. Along the way, she essentially apprenticed in hospitals, working hard and learning much but earning surprisingly little considering her hours worked and the support she gave to more senior and accomplished professionals. By the time she is in her 30s, she is working in a career where it is not uncommon to put in a 80 or 100 hour week, and though she may be well-compensated in terms of salary, she is still probably paying off her loans (there is a doctor whom I am familiar with who indicated he did not finish paying off his loans until his 40s). Why should she want to give more of that pay to the federal government?

2) The federal government arguably isn't a good steward of this money. Millions or billions of these tax dollars are wasted every year. (Just look for stories on contracts to feed troops in Afghanistan if you need a current example). I'm not even addressing the money that is dedicated to issues/causes/problems that many people disagree with (i.e., funding for abortion clinics, subsidies to corn farmers, or continued aid to states like Israel, etc) but simply outright fraud, waste, and abuse. Why should I feel guilty about trying to avoid paying more taxes when, if I do, a larger amount of my tax dollars will go into the pocket of some corrupt contractor in Kabul or into the pocket of some incompetent official in Cairo?

3) States are in many cases even worse stewards of this money! (I just moved out of California, where I lived for almost 4 years. I was shocked at how high state taxes were in a state where the infrastructure was so degraded, and where schools were so underfunded, and where so many state workers earned high salaries with even higher retirement packages).

4) This country was founded by people who were tired of taxation without representation (as well as a myriad of other issues that we rarely remember today). Yet some have argued we are taxed far more heavily now than Americans ever have been, and it increases every year. Outside of the yearly income taxes, Americans pay taxes on numerous products (including many products we use every day), we are taxed again with sales tax, our retirement and savings accounts are taxed, our energy is taxed, our property is taxed, our inheritances are taxed, states and cities tax us, etc, etc, etc. I have read studies which conclude that about half of most American's incomes goes to paying varying taxes of one sort or another. So half of my income goes to bureaucrats, administrators, state and federal workers, and politicians who can't pass budgets, can't figure out where to get the money to keep teachers in school for 40 hours a week, can't keep roads maintained, give away hundreds of millions of dollars to governments that are hostile to ours (and which are even more incompetent when it comes to the management of their own finances, which is probably the bigger sin, actually, when it comes to spending our dollars on them), or even pass legislation on background checks for gun buyers (which most Americans apparently approve of)?

And an American should feel bad, somehow, about wanting to pay fewer or less taxes?