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Tax the 1%ers and banks to pay for austerity?

Should the 1%ers and the banks be taxed to pay for austerity  

63 members have voted

  1. 1. Should the 1%ers and the banks be taxed to pay for austerity

    • Yes Tax the 1%ers and the banks to pay for austerity
      44
    • No Do not tax the 1%ers and the banks to pay for austerity
      19


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Hi RangerPL

You ignore the fact the money they lend they get from the 99%'s pensions and savings. They are not giving you credit they are lending you back your money.

They are lending you someone elses money.

Not theirs, and not yours.

If you had enough enough cash in your savings account to buy house, you wouldn't ask for a mortgage in the first place.

Your pension of course might be more profitable to you invested than it is to sell it at the time you wish to buy a house.

Most likely for many people your existing pension pot is too small to pay for a house anyway.

Unless you have one of those multi-million pound ones that government employee's all get of course

---------- Post added at 03:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:48 PM ----------

No libertarian worth his salt is going to defend fraud, you want us to improve the situation by taking immoral action for the sake of taking action. We do not support taxation, regardless of race, sex, or wealth.

If you want to see justice served, go after those who lied and cheated their way to the top. Attacking wealth for the sake of wealth is going down the road to mob rule.

Well said that man.

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Well, quoting Friedman on this matter is funny, as we all know that the financial crisis we suffer today finds his roots in the 80's when Friedman was Reagan's main advisor and when finance was decided to be completely deregulated. Monetarism has failed, time to find new solutions, because financial markets aren't efficient by themselves, they need regulations to serve their ONLY purpose which is financing real economies instead of pure speculation.

Sarbanes Oxley Act is one proof that without regulation and moralization, private investors aren't protected by the imaginary "market law" or "invisible hand". If this hand is invisible, it's simply because it doesn't exist. The law of the jungle isn't a law.

Edited by ProfTournesol

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Investors tend to be the sort of people best able to protect themselves.

It's when other people seek to "protect them" that more of their problems start.

Edited by Baff1

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Hi all

In fact Milton Friedman retracted most of what he said in that video in the light of how much damage monetarism did to the world. In particular to the South American countries who's economies he destroyed; particularly Chile which was of course the big failed experiment of monetarism.

So now Friedman says he was wrong

William Keegan Sunday June 22, 2003 The Observer... The economic quote of the month - and probably the decade - is that Milton Friedman now admits: 'The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success.' He added: 'I'm not sure I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.' (FT, 7 June 2003)...

http://phoenix.liu.edu/~uroy/eco54/histlist/Friedman_M/monetarism-MF2.html

As always follow the link to the original article in full.

It is more or less accepted by modern economists that Friedman was only correct where he closely followed the writings of John Maynard Keynes. His obsession with the quantity of money supply was also fundamentaly flawed by his assumption that the velocity of money in his money supply equation was a constant. A moments thought shows that to be a load of crap. Consider the velocity of money in Germany in the late twenties early thirties.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/05/010705.asp

Apparently Friedman decided to make it a constant because he found the math too hard. Even to this day you have libertarians that still think it is a constant. Ask them what the constant is and you get blank looks and figures plucked out of the air.

So come on libertarians what is the value for the constant in Friedman's money supply equation?

Kind Regards walker

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Hi The Hebrew Hammer

The 1%ers and bankers think capitalism is so broken by their own mismanagement that they will not put their money where their mouth is and risk their money to fix it.

Veterans are joining the occupy movements in increasing numbers.

The social contract is broken.

Work it out.

Or join jblackrupert and fiddle while Rome burns.

Or:

That has the highest chance to fix capitalism and avert what otherwise is inevitable as well as punishing those who caused the problem.

Kind Regards walker

Social contract? Ahahahahahahaha oh wow, those handful of veterans that do support the movement are often lambasted by active duty military for being boots and POGs.

We've tried quasi-socialism in America, and you're saying we fix our problem by embracing that even more? The wealth gap is created by government, look at the numbers. Ever since we have left the gold standard the gap has widened.

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As to the myth that 1%ers pay more tax than the 99%, it is just that, a myth.

No it isn't (at least in the United States):

Distribution_of_U.S._Federal_Taxes_2000.JPG

There are some exceptions where big companies get away with what is essentially tax evasion through clever accounting (a problem that could be fixed by simplifying the tax code and removing loopholes), but by and large, most tax income is collected from the wealthiest individuals. The top 1% pays 39% of all taxes collected, and the top 5% pays 59%. 95% of the population pays less than half of the taxes.

By the way watch out for their gold bubble, you have been warned.

There is no gold bubble. Gold will continue to go up in value as fiat currencies worldwide continue to falter. By the end of the decade you will see gold prices above $5,000 per troy ounce.

Time to punish them with tax levels that make them scream.

They will just stop producing then (or move overseas to more business-friendly countries); there is nothing that says they have to actually put up with your proposed insane tax hikes. People will lose their jobs and the economy will be weakened.

The law of the jungle isn't a law.

True, but market law is not the law of the jungle. Market law constitutes a set of rules such as the right to property and the prohibition of fraud that allow people to cooperate with one another in an environment free of coercion. The reason that we're in our current economic situation is not that market law has failed; on the contrary, we have not allowed market law to function. We have distorted market signals with government-guaranteed loans, artificially low interest rates and coercive legislation, and when the housing bubble burst, we socialized the losses of the institutions which, according to market law, should have failed.

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Originally Posted by walker View Post
As to the myth that 1%ers pay more tax than the 99%, it is just that, a myth.

No it isn't (at least in the United States):

It's not a myth in the UK either.....

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True, but market law is not the law of the jungle. Market law constitutes a set of rules such as the right to property and the prohibition of fraud that allow people to cooperate with one another in an environment free of coercion. The reason that we're in our current economic situation is not that market law has failed; on the contrary, we have not allowed market law to function. We have distorted market signals with government-guaranteed loans, artificially low interest rates and coercive legislation, and when the housing bubble burst, we socialized the losses of the institutions which, according to market law, should have failed.

Yep, i know this neoclassical theory by heart. Markets are failing because the State (or something else) is intervening providing them from reaching their equilibrium. Without state intervention, it would be the Nirvana. What's funny is that the communists are using the same kinds of flawed explanations. "Socialism" is an imperfect state of communism, so if Socialism (as seen in former USSR for example) has failed, it's because it wasn't radical enough.

However perfect competition (ie complying with its hypothesis, such as infinite buyers and sellers, perfect factor mobility, perfect information, perfect factor mobility etc.) was never observed apart from some very limited cases (such as exchange or free software markets for example).

The problem is that real life isn't a laboratory. If pure market competition is never observed, it's a myth. Such as Communism. Moreover, the very strong hypothesis that free markets equilibrium will naturally ensure society Nirvana (ie Pareto-efficient for the whole society) cannot be proven outside of the mythical general equilibrium, so it's at best a wishful thinking, or a simplified teaching tool to caricaturize and simplify economic mechanisms for students.

Real life economy isn't made of (perfect) equations, but of (imperfect) people. Thinking that pursueing individual selfish objectives may lead to a collective happiness is such a fairy tale that i'm still amazed people still believe in it (well, some people believe in scientology so...everything may happen).

Sadly it leads to major failures, such as financial markets deregulation. Without prudential mechanisms and state intervention, financial markets aren't efficiently financing real economy.

Because of their short sighted view, banks and investment funds are gambling in a worldwide casino, increasing overall volatility and speculation. But real economy isn't shortsighted, it must be built on the long term and needs serious financial institutions alongside it.

To cut it short, freedom : yes, of course, but not without any regulation.

EDIT : please read this post, i struggled a lot writing it with my poor english skills :pet1:

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The 1% is so wealthy because our current system (we do not have a pure capitalist economy) allows them to hoard wealth so easily. Regulations and taxes actually contribute to the problem because it becomes more profitable to just hoard money than to actually invest it.

The solution is to allow the free market to spread the wealth. If the 1% invests its tremendous wealth, that will create jobs and get the economy moving again.

Of course, we need to go after the tax evaders, scammers and other financial criminals, but there is no need to "tax them until they scream" as walker says.

Capitalism isn't the problem, it's the government. We need to reform the financial system, simplify the tax system and make sure everyone is playing by the rules. Any further intervention can be disastrous. It might not redistribute all the wealth as quickly, but it will ensure that we have a healthy economy in the long run.

This problem was caused by government intervention. You don't solve that by intervening further. That would be like trying to put fires out by pouring gasoline on them.

Distribution_of_U.S._Federal_Taxes_2000.JPG

Yeah there's no denying that the top 1% pays more than the rest, regardless of whether you think they should pay more. Walker's claim to the contrary is pure propaganda.

Edited by RangerPL

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The solution is to allow the free market to spread the wealth. If the 1% invests its tremendous wealth, that will create jobs and get the economy moving again.

And how will free markets spread wealth and convince 1% to invest in real economy ?

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How can you say capitalism isn't the problem, and at the same time say we need to go after tax evaders?

You cannot tweak around the edges and still call yourself a believer in free markets, sorry. You are a fucking fool if you think empowering the rich in this country will help the poor, you're just picking winners from the people who have already won. Instead, get out of the economy, and the market will decide who has the best ideas and business plans. Competition feeds innovation, innovation leads to new industry, which leads to those jobs we so desire.

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There is no gold bubble. Gold will continue to go up in value as fiat currencies worldwide continue to falter. By the end of the decade you will see gold prices above $5,000 per troy ounce..

Gold has lost 10% of it's value in the last few months.

You don't have to buy gold, you could buy copper or iron or salt or clay or limestone or magnesite ore or oil.

The idea is to have your money in the form of tradable goods rather than vulnerable currency.

That people all instinctively flock to gold instead of other goods is why the price can get over-inflated.

---------- Post added at 01:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:10 PM ----------

Because of their short sighted view, banks and investment funds are gambling in a worldwide casino, increasing overall volatility and speculation. But real economy isn't shortsighted, it must be built on the long term and needs serious financial institutions alongside it.

To cut it short, freedom : yes, of course, but not without any regulation.

EDIT : please read this post, i struggled a lot writing it with my poor english skills :pet1:

I want regulation when it is in my favour to have regulation, and no regulation when it is not in my favour to have it.

Same as the next man.

The problems arise because our self intrests are not all mutually beneficial.

---------- Post added at 01:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:13 PM ----------

And how will free markets spread wealth and convince 1% to invest in real economy ?

Why do you feel that 1% are not investing in the real economy?

Why do you wish to spread wealth from the 1% who invest it smartly in the real economy to the % who will just spunk it all on crap? Not invest it in anything at all.

It's not like you live in a country where there are starving all around you.

Where the poorest cannot escape poverty or get no education. Far from it.

Ii's like watching all those immensley fat people in American soup kitchens. If that's what they call poverty then their society has much to pat itself on the back for.

I put it to you then when the bottom 1% of your society has wealth that is in the top 40% of the planet, you don't need to cry too hard about it if others in your society are able to aquire more than them.

Get as rich as you like 1%ers. The rest of us all have quite enough for ourselves. We don't need to steal from you. We aren't exactly poor ourselves.

Edited by Baff1

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And how will free markets spread wealth and convince 1% to invest in real economy ?

That would be because you live in (1) France and (2) don't understand Marginal Utility. I can't help you out with the former, but I can tell you to get a degree in economics to help solve the later.

---------- Post added at 12:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 AM ----------

Gold has lost 10% of it's value in the last few months.

You don't have to buy gold, you could buy copper or iron or salt or clay or limestone or magnesite ore or oil.

Copper doesn't last very long. Salt and Limestone decay after a short while. Gold is more plentiful and doesn't tarnish. Yeah, there is Platinum, but that is really scarce.

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Since when was gold plentiful? Sorry, I am pretty crap with these kind of things but I always thought there wasn't much gold.

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Since when was gold plentiful? Sorry, I am pretty crap with these kind of things but I always thought there wasn't much gold.

Hi all

Gold is not plentiful but gold derivatives are being manufactured like a sausage factory. This then inserts non existent gold into the market allowing a fantasy trade that is used to pump up the market. Bank A sells the gold to bank B but bank B takes the gold as cash! This means bank A keeps the bullion. It is based on the fractional reserve model. They can then invest the additional liquidity where they want like back in the gold market thus pumping the value of gold up. Instead of fiat money the Bleeding Heart Libertarians have FIAT GOLD!

Consider this graph of gold prices classic bubble:

Gold_price_in_USD.png

In fact the current price inflation is an almost an exact copy of the previous 1980s bubble in the same graph.

Here is a picture of the housing bubble:

Case-shiller-index-values.jpg

Whenever you see a ski slope in the value of something that is not due to a new market or use for the product it is because it is a speculator driven bubble.

Get a clue people, the banks that own 90% of US gold bullion have 30% shorts and rising in gold. "Gold" is increasingly traded as Exchange Traded Funds in an unregulated market. People are buying and selling "Gold" that does not exist. Just like they did with the credit default swaps where people were trading triple A rated credit that did not exist.

We are hearing the same myths that went around at the end of the property bubble "the price went up for the last ... So it can only go up!" Also known as the one born every minute explanation.

The fact that all the key players in the gold market like Soros, Paulson and Einhorn are all leaving should give you a clue.

I think it is the same mentality that drives these Bleeding heart Libertarians to think that Milton Friedman had it right about capitalism and his velocity of money is a constant fantasy. The plane fact is that the Libertarian fantasy of capitalism is based on bad science and a theory that does not hold water. Any one notice that all those libertarians suddenly clammed up and wanted to change the subject when I asked them what the value for Friedman's Velocity of Circulation constant was?

So having broken capitalism with fantasy economics not once, not twice but three times now the libertarians want you to give the 1%ers and bankers more tax breaks, not chase after them for the taxes they still owe, 14 billion in the UK and over 300 Billion in the US because if we try to collect it the threat from the Bleeding Heart Libertarians is that they will make us eat Tree Bark

... people striping bark from trees because there is nothing else to eat.
Hmm.

As to the continuing myth that the 1% pay more tax than the 99% it remains fantasy. Based first of all on the myth that income tax is the only tax. And even the fallacy of the 1%ers paying more income tax is concocted by using skewed graphs.

Distribution_of_U.S._Federal_Taxes_2000.JPG

The Graphs X axis is foreshortened by con-concocting a fantasy earners and income brackets scale that does not reflect reality of the numbers of people paying those taxes, if the graph were to use the total range of income with width on the X axis, from say 10,000 to the 100s of millions of dollars that the top earns earn, so that the numbers of people paying the taxes was evident then the graph would end in the next county and you would plainly see that it is the 99% who pay the majority of tax by the sheer mass of their numbers with the top income earners a hairline at the end of the graph. By using this trick these Bleeding Heart Libertarians hope to fool the 99% in to believing their fallacies.

And of course as I pointed out the biggest taxes you pay are not to government but are those paid to banks as interest/taxes on loans using your money as collateral via a fractional reserve to your government where the bank gave your government the loan at a teaser rate and then keeps hiking it as and when they want in order to get what they want. I site what happened to Greece and Italy and Now is happening to Spain and will soon happen in the US and UK.

Because austerity like capitalism is failing with rising unemployment defense cuts actualy causing a rise in defense costs all leading to a massive shortfall in taxation which the Government will have to pay with, you guessed it MORE DEBT!

Austerity in turn leads to Stagnation and the threat of Stagflation across the west.

Yet these Bleeding Heart Libertarians continue to whine that we should give all our money to the 1%ers and Bankers they can fix it. Just like they did when they Bailed out the Welfare Queens of Wall Street.

Kind Regards walker

Edited by walker
spelling and grammar

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That would be because you live in (1) France and (2) don't understand Marginal Utility. I can't help you out with the former, but I can tell you to get a degree in economics to help solve the later

Oops, sorry, i thought we were discussing as grown ups. Silly me :rolleyes:

Edited by ProfTournesol

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Hi all

As I suggested a rise in income tax of 30% on the top 15% of earners would have no effect on wealth, it is not after all an asset tax, for five years or until austerity is no longer needed. It would primarily target those involved in allowing capitalism to fail thus punishing them for their failure. Unlike austerity no one would loose jobs or their homes or starve or freeze to death. It would allow us to skip austerity and pay off the loans that the 1%ers and bankers sold us in the first place. And allow economies to once again expand.

Because that is what this is all about, DEBT, created by the 1%ers and bankers and that is where the focus must be. To pay off the debt that the bankers sold nations at their teaser rate and are now busy raising the interest on we need cash which governments get by taxation. Because the 1%ers and Bankers think capitalism is so broken they dare not invest. The 1%ers and bankers are not paying their share and are not investing in business, hence why entrepreneurs cannot get loans or investment to increase the size of their factories.

Clearly it is the 1%ers and bankers who have to pay, since they will not do it them selves, as they no longer trust capitalism, we need to tax them to make them pay off THEIR DEBT. As I said no more carrot it is time to give them some stick. Tax them until they scream

Kind Regards walker

Post Script:

To go along with the question to the Bleeding Heart Libertarians about what the value for Friedman's constant for Velocity of Circulation was?

Why do you Bleeding Heart Libertarians think the 1%ers and Bankers have a right to skip austerity?

Edited by walker

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It would allow us to skip austerity and pay off the loans that the 1%ers and bankers sold us in the first place. And allow economies to once again expand.

If you took out a loan, that debt is your debt, no doubt about it. Unless you were forced to sign at gun point there is nothing you can do about it. I was offered a 100% mortgage but I didn't accept it and bought a smaller house because I thought it was a ridiculous idea. We have been through this cycle many times before - people always seem to think like spoiled children and that the good times will never end. We have been through financial cycles many times and those that don't think about the future really are gambling their lives away.

Politicians have spent the last 10 years borrowing money and selling off assets at low prices to in effect buy longer terms in office. Some of us have been worried for a long time about the levels of borrowing by governments. You can't blame the financial industry for the greed and short sightedness of governments. You often talk about myths Walker - the only myth I see is this continual nonsense that the 1%ers and the banking industry created this situation on their own. It's just nonsense, you can't create debt without someone wanting to borrow.

Edited by PELHAM

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If you took out a loan, that debt is your debt, no doubt about it.
In actual fact that is consenting on paper for you as a legal fiction - (you on paper), with a number given to you and added to a computer, so in effect its not your debt as the human entity :) All things considered the game still plays out the same.
You often talk about myths Walker - the only myth I see is this continual nonsense that the 1%ers and the banking industry created this situation on their own. It's just nonsense, you can't create debt without someone wanting to borrow.

You dont consider the idea of selling the "lifestyle" at all then? No media pushing easy money through advertising, marketing strategies, carrot on a stick sales? People simply woke up and wanted lots of things and that was all completely their own doing with no assistance from anyone above to get them into that lifestyle frame of mind?

Maybe people might want to check out this documentary

"The Century Of Self" (4 hours):





IyPzGUsYyKM



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM





When you work this in with years for generation to generation via smart people at the top, you tend to still think that this 1 percent group hand their hand firmly in this process to stay in that position. You cant simply say it wasn't just them, but you can say the "other percent" were moulded well for fattening up. But, this would be a conspiracy theory in some peoples eyes, which always makes me smile.


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Since when was gold plentiful? Sorry, I am pretty crap with these kind of things but I always thought there wasn't much gold.

I've never found anywhere that was sold out.

---------- Post added at 05:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:15 PM ----------

Politicians have spent the last 10 years borrowing money and selling off assets at low prices to in effect buy longer terms in office. Some of us have been worried for a long time about the levels of borrowing by governments. You can't blame the financial industry for the greed and short sightedness of governments. You often talk about myths Walker - the only myth I see is this continual nonsense that the 1%ers and the banking industry created this situation on their own. It's just nonsense, you can't create debt without someone wanting to borrow.

The government operated at a defecit long before the banking crisis and it still operates at one after.

It is a mistake to think that without the banking crash we wouldn't be in the same place as we are now. We would.

The banking crisis probably accelerated our debt crisis by about 3 years.

Hence why the Eurozone is now having the exact same troubles as us even though they weren't exposed to the US default like we were.

Thankfully, as long as the left continues to blame the bankers for all our economic woes, they will never see government again.

That's far left ideolgy. The loony left. Might just as well blame it on those aliens who made all the crop circles.

Edited by Baff1

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You dont consider the idea of selling the "lifestyle" at all then? No media pushing easy money through advertising, marketing strategies, carrot on a stick sales? People simply woke up and wanted lots of things and that was all completely their own doing with no assistance from anyone above to get them into that lifestyle frame of mind?

Lock the media up as well then :D

I prefer a tax on the media for every inaccuracy and made up story lol.

Also I am disturbed by the assertion that we are in this mess because borrowing what you couldn't afford became 'trendy'. It's probably true!

Might just as well blame it on those aliens who made all the crop circles.

That was students with string and planks of wood - they admitted it and showed how it was done. Amazing how many were fooled by it, including many weather scientists!

Edited by PELHAM

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Since i'm a pinhead, how can you base an evergrowing economy off of a finite resource, gold? (if we go back to the gold standard)

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