Poor camel . . . .




For such wisdom, and deft – I will try to help;

Mikey, People who make say $20k for a family of four spend every dime on food, shelter and health care.
People who make $100k for a family of two spend half (?) on these necessities and have an amount of discretionary income – say a good $20k a year.
People who make $500k as an individual - well have lots of discretionary income.

Now – the guvment needs money for the Army and street lights.

Take 25% tax across the board and the poor man can’t feed his kids. The middle man has to be frugal. And the rich man goes to Cancun instead of France for summer (exchange rates you know).

So the American people have historically thought, and voted, that it is immoral to tax the wage earners on a flat rate. I’m talking about moral people here . . . .

Brewha wrote:

Its that kind of kill the rich spirit that made this country great in the first place.

MikeyRavioli wrote:

Allrighty then.

FuzzNJ wrote:

You just want things more "fair" in your favor!

HockeyDad wrote:

and the funny thing is - I actually kind of agree with some of the points these OWS guys are making. People who did everything right - got good grades, took student loans and went to good colleges, worked hard and graduated with degrees - and now have nothing but debt and their best prospect for getting a job is pulling a latte at Starbucks or stocking a shelf in Target. In the mean time the banking industry did everything wrong - gave 500k motgages to people working at Taco Bell, created a housing bubble, took on massive loads of toxic debt - and had the government swoop in and bail them out and now they are making record profits while still not lending money or creating jobs. The people of the country want to know where the jobs are. Where their bailout is. I can understand that.

But the other portion who feel that their life sucks so lets punish people who are succesful - No, I don't get.

MikeyRavioli wrote:

I have not once used 'fair' while talking about taxes or while defending a progressive tax. That is a term that those on the right keep bringing up here. I have never spoken in terms of me or mine, rather overall policy. I also was not the one who brought up the flat tax, nor have I ever brought up or even thought of a scenario where everyone would or should have the same take home pay.

Correcting some of the ways you have mischaracterized my views and posts.

FuzzNJ wrote:

and the funny thing is - I actually kind of agree with some of the points these OWS guys are making. People who did everything right - got good grades, took student loans and went to good colleges, worked hard and graduated with degrees - and now have nothing but debt and their best prospect for getting a job is pulling a latte at Starbucks or stocking a shelf in Target. In the mean time the banking industry did everything wrong - gave 500k motgages to people working at Taco Bell, created a housing bubble, took on massive loads of toxic debt - and had the government swoop in and bail them out and now they are making record profits while still not lending money or creating jobs. The people of the country want to know where the jobs are. Where their bailout is. I can understand that.

But the other portion who feel that their life sucks so lets punish people who are succesful - No, I don't get.

MikeyRavioli wrote:

Puh-Leeze!

Took student loans...operative words...TOOK and LOAN

Took: Agree to buy

Loan: A Thing that is borrowed

Nobody put a gun to their heads and made them sign the paperwork nor did they ever promise they'd make a gazillion dollars with a political science major or an MBA.

There's nothing wrong with a trade school. NOTHING!

Conducting themselves in the manner they're going about it...they'll amount to nothing.

The bailouts? Gimmie a break. This is the EXACT reason why there should've been NO bailouts or buyouts. It keeps on going down the line. Government isn't freaking Santa Claus. You cannot hand out money for nothing...ever. NEVER. Especially when you're giving taxpayer's money.

DrMaddVibe wrote:

by the way - now I really know I am a moderate.
I am arguing with Bewha and DMV

MikeyRavioli wrote:

No gov isn't Santa Claus nor is there anything wrong with trade school. I happen to have an MBA and my brother happens to be an electician and owns his own contracting company. On any given year he makes more money than I do. He busts his ass for it.

I wasn't for the bailouts either but the fact is the gov gives out money all day every day. Once it was done the precedent was set. The people are just looking to be painted with the same brush and feel they aren't. I get that. Its too late to argue if the bailouts were right or wrong. The fact is they happened and if the gov can do that for corporations; why can't they do that for people? Corporations paid it back? So would the people. Especially in the form of new tax revenue from adding to the employment rolls.

I dont think that taking over private property and pooping in a park while embracing dirty hippies with other agendas is the way to show it.

But the path that we were all told to walk down; the American dream; was work hard, get a good education, get a good job, buy a house, raise a family, blah, blah, blah

Not everyone can afford to do that without student loans. While no one pointed a gun to anyones head it was kind of part of the deal.

MikeyRavioli wrote:

I'm not debating you. It was kind of a joke. You actually responded to me witha big "Oh pleeeeeez" prompting my reply. The OWS situation is going to end ugly. There is no doubt about it.

I do agree with a lot of what you are saying. And I do agree with some of what I hear coming from the other side. I am probably closer to your side of things than the other but I also think that neither "side" is going to fix anything. Any candidate that has any progressive revolutionary ideas will be completly un-electable. The finger pointing and the us vs them mentality has provided a lovely smoke screen to hide the fact that the system is broken. Keep the fools arguing over blue vs red; republican vs democrat; liberal vs conservative. While we argue the foundation of what made this country great gets broken into smaller and smaller peices and smuggled out the door.

The reality is this is where we are. This is the starting point. This is the problem that needs to be solved. And to solve it you need to work within the framework of system that created it or tear the system down and start again. Which by the way I seem to recall was also a tenant of Jefferson. didnt he call for periodic revolution? If he looked at the situation today I think his first reaction would be what do you expect from a 200+ year old government.

MikeyRavioli wrote:

Whether they should or shouldnt exist they do exist. I agree with you that they are everything thast you say they are. But they are also something else. They are there. And not just there. All over. We could shoot them and bulldoze the boddies into a mass grave, we could arrest them and end up costing ourselves a fortune in legal system expenses, or we can accept the fact that there are a lot of angry people out there and realize that refom might not be such a bad thing. You yourself listed several items in your above post that at very least could use a little reform

MikeyRavioli wrote:

"We started the American Revolution because we were taxed 13%! We grabbed our squirrel guns off the mantels and took on the world's superpower and won"

DrMaddVibe wrote: