How should they Pretend?

[Johnfromokc]

 

[The Man]

A little reality check for you John...the top one percent have been paying more.



And the lower half have been paying less

 

[Accountable]

If John thinks that cartoon gives historical perspective, it explains much of the idiotic tripe he spews.

 

[The Man]

I think John has given up on becoming a top one percenter and merely wants the govt to tax rape em as a result.
If you cant join em beat em

 

[The Man]

Let me save you the trouble John
You union leaching chickenhawk tea billies voting against your best interest.

 

[Stone]

It's not the tax rate that defines socialism.....it's what the government does with the taxes.

It's pretty easy to see that your cartoon is worthless, John
Our government has become an entitlement generating machine as shown by statistics......and that is a movement towards socialism.
Bush did it, Obama does it more.

 

[Johnfromokc]

If John thinks that cartoon gives historical perspective, it explains much of the idiotic tripe he spews.

You sure have gone downhill Acc. If TM is the best ally you have that should tell you something.

You've really turned into a blithering schizophrenic fucktard lately. That's what happens to people who get 100% of their income from the government and think they are really a libertarian.

You should use your government health benefits to see a mental health professional.

 

[Johnfromokc]

It's not the tax rate that defines socialism.....it's what the government does with the taxes.

It's pretty easy to see that your cartoon is worthless, John
Our government has become an entitlement generating machine as shown by statistics......and that is a movement towards socialism.
Bush did it, Obama does it more.

Have you ever stopped to consider that when income disparity gets to a certain point that middle class wages have become so low that people have to seek public assistance to make ends meet? Taxes are lowered on the wealthy - and instead of trickling down that wealth to the middle class and working class by building American companies here in America, they take it overseas where they can make massive profits off slave wages. Working Americans are displaced and have to seek unemployment benefits and sometimes welfare. This results in greater tax expenditures and less incoming revenue. It is an economic death spiral - and that’s where we are presently. It’s not “Socialism” that drove all these formerly working Americans onto government assistance - it is conservative trickle down deregulation economic policy that did it. You can put up any chart you want to try and prove your point - but when your economic policy is such that it shrinks the middle class, you get our present national economic situation. The wealth has not trickled down to the middle class - it has flowed upward to the Plutocracy like a high pressure fire hose. Yes - the wealthy do pay more in dollars of taxes - but when middle class incomes have been driven down over the last 30 years, the middle class can’t exactly pick up the tab. The household income of the bottom 50% in America is around $35,000 for the high end. Conservatives complain that 47% pay no federal tax - but when you honestly look at the incomes of that 47%, they are well below the $35,000 point. How much tax do you think you can extract from those incomes? The bottom line is that the majority of tax revenue must come from the top 1% - far more than they are paying now. Lowering taxes on the top 1% has caused this situation. We have the lowest taxes in our lifetimes yet look at the economic condition of the nation. We have been doing it the conservative trickle down deregulation way for over 30 years - it is time to do something different. Otherwise, the spiral will continue.

 

[Stone]

Have you ever stopped to consider that when income disparity gets to a certain point that middle class wages have become so low that people have to seek public assistance to make ends meet? Taxes are lowered on the wealthy - and instead of trickling down that wealth to the middle class and working class by building American companies here in America, they take it overseas where they can make massive profits off slave wages. Working Americans are displaced and have to seek unemployment benefits and sometimes welfare. This results in greater tax expenditures and less incoming revenue. It is an economic death spiral - and that’s where we are presently. It’s not “Socialism” that drove all these formerly working Americans onto government assistance - it is conservative trickle down deregulation economic policy that did it. You can put up any chart you want to try and prove your point - but when your economic policy is such that it shrinks the middle class, you get our present national economic situation. The wealth has not trickled down to the middle class - it has flowed upward to the Plutocracy like a high pressure fire hose. Yes - the wealthy do pay more in dollars of taxes - but when middle class incomes have been driven down over the last 30 years, the middle class can’t exactly pick up the tab. The household income of the bottom 50% in America is around $35,000 for the high end. Conservatives complain that 47% pay no federal tax - but when you honestly look at the incomes of that 47%, they are well below the $35,000 point. How much tax do you think you can extract from those incomes? The bottom line is that the majority of tax revenue must come from the top 1% - far more than they are paying now. Lowering taxes on the top 1% has caused this situation. We have the lowest taxes in our lifetimes yet look at the economic condition of the nation. We have been doing it the conservative trickle down deregulation way for over 30 years - it is time to do something different. Otherwise, the spiral will continue.

Have you ever stopped to consider that when income disparity gets to a certain point that middle class wages have become so low that people have to seek public assistance to make ends meet?

Have you ever considered that the problem is more than just corporate greed?

Taxes are lowered on the wealthy - and instead of trickling down that wealth to the middle class and working class by building American companies here in America, they take it overseas where they can make massive profits off slave wages.

Don't bitch to me about it, I've stated many times that trickle down theory is flawed and obviously favors the most wealthy.

Working Americans are displaced and have to seek unemployment benefits and sometimes welfare.

Yes, but as the graphs show, the trend to socialism is more than a response to hard times, it's become government policy.....appeasement.

they take it overseas where they can make massive profits off slave wages. Working Americans are displaced and have to seek unemployment benefits and sometimes welfare. This results in greater tax expenditures and less incoming revenue.

Looks like typical bleeding heart, left wing, pinko commie rhetoric to me
It's a lot more complex than that
US labor certainly had a major negative influence by negotiating outrageous contracts in the 50's, 60's and early 70's while US management feasted off the consumer, too.
It's not the foreign manufactures you need to worry about, it's the loss of the consumer support looking for value and quality that drives increased imports....and not all are cheaper than the US counterpart ( quality issues).

This results in greater tax expenditures and less incoming revenue.

Our society is paying the price for the indulgences of labor, management and a government that has steadily increased entitlements as a way of life.....and major corruption while doing so.

It’s not “Socialism” that drove all these formerly working Americans onto government assistance

No....not all, but it's obviously played a destructive role that is reaching unsustainable levels.

it is conservative trickle down deregulation economic policy that did it.

And outrageous labor contracts in the past and a society that seems to reward corruption.

You can put up any chart you want to try and prove your point

I did and proved my point.
Tax rates do not define socialism, it's what the government does with them.
Your cartoon was a simplistic fallacy.

but when your economic policy is such that it shrinks the middle class, you get our present national economic situation.

And that damage is accumulative and includes the activities of once powerful unions which you seem to deny.

The wealth has not trickled down to the middle class - it has flowed upward to the Plutocracy like a high pressure fire hose. Yes - the wealthy do pay more in dollars of taxes - but when middle class incomes have been driven down over the last 30 years, the middle class can’t exactly pick up the tab.

Don't look at me for a scapegoat, I neither voted for Bush nor supported the trickle down concept.
Your position appears to be to deny the reality of your own labor interests and treat them as protected actions, not responsible for the part they have played in our downward economic spiral.

This is why your cartoons fail.
They're one sided bullshit.

when middle class incomes have been driven down over the last 30 years, the middle class can’t exactly pick up the tab. The household income of the bottom 50% in America is around $35,000 for the high end. Conservatives complain that 47% pay no federal tax - but when you honestly look at the incomes of that 47%, they are well below the $35,000 point.

You are posting an obvious observation....so what does that have to do with my showing, with statistics, that the Federal Government has been advancing socialism and as you noted, it's during an economic death spiral which could become self sustaining because labor and management brought us to the condition we're in and that neither party will own up to cuts in their budgetary pets and compromise on tax increases?

BTW.....and I've stated this before....the middle class needs a tax break at this time, not an increase in tax load.
I have no issue with taxes going up a couple of points on the very wealthy.

But when you and several others argue, as in the past, prosperity through taxation.......you're full of shit

Lowering taxes on the top 1% has caused this situation.

No....the biggest impact came from speculation on derivatives driving our banking system into default while speculation on oil drove up energy costs that negatively impacted manufacturing and a consumer base that was maxed out on credit and defaulted on many loans, especially housing.
Then come the issues with a flawed tax revenue stream with a nation struggling to be productive but limited by past outrageous labor contracts competing with cheap foreign labor.

You leave out too damn much.

We have the lowest taxes in our lifetimes yet look at the economic condition of the nation.

Pretty sure that's going to change very soon.

We have been doing it the conservative trickle down deregulation way for over 30 years - it is time to do something different. Otherwise, the spiral will continue.

It's pretty obvious you are referring to more Socialism, John.

 

[Johnfromokc]

Did you ever read this book Stone?

 

[Johnfromokc]

 

[Stone]

Did you ever read this book Stone?

Got it recently from the library but haven't had a chance to open it, yet.

 

[The Man]

Ok john.
You want to raise taxes more on the wealthy
Explain to us how this will solve the current crises by expanding the private sector

 

[Accountable]

It would do virtually nothing, just as keeping the taxes where they are would do nothing for stimulus. It's just the latest distraction Washington is using, pretending that they can fix the economy and being completely unwilling to cut costs or release power.

 

[Johnfromokc]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/opinion/henry-ford-when-capitalists-cared.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

IN the rancorous debate over how to get the sluggish economy moving, we have forgotten the wisdom of Henry Ford. In 1914, not long after the Ford Motor Company came out with the Model T, Ford made the startling announcement that he would pay his workers the unheard-of wage of $5 a day.

Not only was it a matter of social justice, Ford wrote, but paying high wages was also smart business. When wages are low, uncertainty dogs the marketplace and growth is weak. But when pay is high and steady, Ford asserted, business is more secure because workers earn enough to become good customers. They can afford to buy Model Ts.

This is not to suggest that Ford single-handedly created the American middle class. But he was one of the first business leaders to articulate what economists call “the virtuous circle of growth”: well-paid workers generating consumer demand that in turn promotes business expansion and hiring. Other executives bought his logic, and just as important, strong unions fought for rising pay and good benefits in contracts like the 1950 “Treaty of Detroit” between General Motors and the United Auto Workers.

Riding the dynamics of the virtuous circle, America enjoyed its best period of sustained growth in the decades after World War II, from 1945 to 1973, even though income tax rates were far higher than today. It created not only unprecedented middle-class prosperity but also far greater economic equality than today.

The chief executives of the long postwar boom believed that business success and workers’ well-being ran in tandem.

Frank W. Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, voiced the corporate mantra of “stakeholder capitalism”: the need to balance the interests of all the stakeholders in the corporate family. “The job of management,” he wrote, “is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly affected interest groups,” which he defined as “stockholders, employees, customers and the public at large.”

Earl S. Willis, a manager of employee benefits at General Electric, declared that “the employee who can plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer’s most productive asset.”

From 1948 to 1973, the productivity of all nonfarm workers nearly doubled, as did average hourly compensation. But things changed dramatically starting in the late 1970s. Although productivity increased by 80.1 percent from 1973 to 2011, average wages rose only 4.2 percent and hourly compensation (wages plus benefits) rose only 10 percent over that time, according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute.

At the same time, corporate profits were booming. In 2006, the year before the Great Recession began, corporate profits garnered the largest share of national income since 1942, while the share going to wages and salaries sank to the lowest level since 1929. In the recession’s aftermath, corporate profits have bounced back while middle-class incomes have stagnated.

Today the prevailing cut-to-the-bone business ethos means that a company like Caterpillar demands a wage freeze and lower health benefits from its workers, while posting record profits.

Globalization, including the rise of Asia, and technological innovation can’t explain all or even most of today’s gaping inequality; if they did, we would see in other advanced economies the same hyperconcentration of wealth and the same stagnation of middle-class wages as in the United States. But we don’t.

In Germany, still a manufacturing and export powerhouse, average hourly pay has risen five times faster since 1985 than in the United States. The secret of Germany’s success, says Klaus Kleinfeld, who ran the German electrical giant Siemens before taking over the American aluminum company Alcoa in 2008, is “the social contract: the willingness of business, labor and political leaders to put aside some of their differences and make agreements in the national interest.”

In short, German leaders have practiced stakeholder capitalism and followed the century-old wisdom of Henry Ford, while American business and political leaders have dismantled the dynamics of the “virtuous circle” in pursuit of downsizing, offshoring and short-term profit and big dividends for their investors.

Today, we are all paying the price for this shift. As Ford recognized, if average Americans do not have secure jobs with steady and rising pay, the economy will be sluggish. Since the early 1990s, we have been mired three times in “jobless recoveries.” It’s time for America’s business elites to step beyond political rhetoric about protecting wealthy “job creators” and grasp Ford’s insight: Give the middle class a better share of the nation’s economic gains, and the economy will grow faster. Our history shows that.

Hedrick Smith, a former correspondent and Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, is the author of “Who Stole the American Dream?”

 

[The Man]

It would do virtually nothing, just as keeping the taxes where they are would do nothing for stimulus. It's just the latest distraction Washington is using, pretending that they can fix the economy and being completely unwilling to cut costs or release power.

Its just to gain public approval for tax hikes...Reduced spending is how to chip away a debt.
But sadly many can not see that ACC...you see it I see it...but many have faith ..and are willing to get fooled again.

Got it recently from the library but haven't had a chance to open it, yet.

I suspect bush will get the blame

 

[The Man]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/opinion/henry-ford-when-capitalists-cared.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

That was during when govt spending was 2541 times less than it is now John

 

[The Man]

Ok john.
You want to raise taxes more on the wealthy
Explain to us how this will solve the current crises by expanding the private sector

Ok John lets try something perhaps easier for you.
What do you propose to do with all this 'confiscated earnings'
You had shown approval of a 94 percent tax in prior posts
Explain to the tea billies of what the govt should do with these confiscated earnings.

 

[Stone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/opinion/henry-ford-when-capitalists-cared.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Idolizing Henry Ford's attitude towards fair wages overlooks his hatred for unionization, the thugs he kept at his factory sites to beat and intimidate union promoters and sympathizers along with his involvement and support of the German Nazi party before WW2 and his association with slave labor there.
That alone should make you wonder how much of Smith's 'story' is cherry picked from quote mining, John.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20030616/SUB/306160746
This google search result shows the depths of Ford's association with the Nazi movement
http://www.google.com/search?q=henry+ford+hitler&btnG=Search&sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&tbo=d&site=

To use Ford as a shining example of corporate America is about as perverted as a story line can get, John.

 

[Johnfromokc]

Stone - you just like to argue about anything and everything. The point of the short article had to do with middle class wages and sharing the profits of productivity - nothing more. Ford was one of the most violent motherfuckers toward workers at one point too - Smith was in no way idolizing Ford - he was only pointing to the wage issue in comparison to the share of profits modern Ologarchs keep for themselves compared to the wages of the working class today.

Try to stick to the point - please don't be like TM - he is a fucking blithering idiot and I skip over his moronic posts and on to other that at least make some sense.