Sorry Rupert, did not read it all the way thru.

I did see some cases in which inheritance would disallow a family business to continue. That would not be fair. I just dont believe that taxing the heck out of rich people for the purpose of redistributing wealth works. It just puts them into a defensive shell of saving and really causes a scrooge effect. I think it is counter productive.

I really dont mind being taxed. I just want it to be easy. I personally would gladly pay 30% of my income if all I had to do was pay 30% of my income. But it is never that easy.

i guess the question i have as far as taking from the rich ala robin hood. who decides how much is enough? i have more than some, is it too much? others have more than i do. who decides? does bill gates have a crapload? well, yeah. and he also is very charitable. so should someone take what he is already giving, so they can give according to who needs it--who decides who needs it?
thing is, if there is a flat tax-i pay 10% (for instance) and gates pays his 10%...now obviously, he has more, so he should give more according to some--but isn't 10% of a billion a hell of a lot of money??
basketball players make a ton of money--too much? well, if they didn't get paid so much, you think the guy selling beer in the stands would make more? hell no, the owner would pocket more!
there is no easy answer as to what to do.

Exactly. I agree with you 100%.

Not to make light of such a serious post, but it costs a SHIAT TON to do the brakes on those suckers! :eek:

Bill Gates would not have to pay much in taxes even if they did raise his tax rate to 95%. Most of his money is in stock. You don't have to pay any tax on that until you sell the stock. So even if his stock appreciates by $5 billion a year, he wouldn't have to pay any taxes on that until he sells the stock. He may never sell it. When he dies, he may actually leave the stock to charity. In that way, the charity would receive more money. Let's say he planned on leaving the money to charity. If he had $40 billion in stock and he sold the stock, he would have to pay $20 billion in taxes and the other $20 billion would go to charity. If he did not sell the stock, but gave the stock to the charity, then the charity would get the whole $40 billion.

As I said before, Warren Buffet is leaving all of his money to charity. I think that is around $50 billion. I bet that money will help a lot more people than if the government would have taken it all.

All this commentary simply dances around the issue...my point (my only point) is that all people are connected and that which harms one harms us all, I said at the outset that equal distribution of wealth will probably never happen...goes against the greedy nature of man....but it should! In my perfect world...Gates wouldn't have all that stock so that's a moot point. Someone asked who determines how much is too much? The obvious (and only) answer is...each one of us. This crazy idea that life is about who gets the most is so counterproductive...you can live in a solid gold mansion on a hill...but if one day the peasants riot and burn it down with you inside, well.. are you better off than if you had a comfortable dwelling and there were no rich folks and peasants, just people sharing what certainly is more than enough to go around? As long as people delude themselves into believing that they DESERVE more than the next guy, we will never have peace...or real freedom. The rich work hard? Some certainly have...but ever hear Dylan's song, Hollis Brown? There are folks who have nothing but have worked hard all their lives, 50 years in the fields from sunup to sundown only to lose everything to sickness, natural disaster, or some greedy bastard stealing it. Fair? What is fair? Again, to quote a Dylan song..."steal a little and they call you thief, steal a lot and they make you king"!

You said in another post that communism is not bad. Communism is terrible. Even if you had a communist nation that went exactly by the book, it would be terrible. If everyone was going to make the same amount of money and nobody could live in a house bigger than 1,500 sq. feet, there would be no incentive to work hard. What do you think drives people? This country would be totally ruined. It is the capitalist environment that produces a genius like Steve Jobs. There wouldn't be people like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet if we had communism here. Why would these guys work their butts off 16 hours a day if they could make the same amount of money being a waiter. People like Buffet and Jobs create tens of thousands of jobs. Our country would be in big trouble if we didn't have people like them, and I don't think we would have people like them if we had communism here. The productivity of the country would go straight downhill if we had communism because nobody would have any incentive to work hard.

I think there would be way more poverty here if we had communism, even if it was communism in its most pristine state with no corruption. Communism doesn't sound that bad in theory but when you really think about it, you realize how terrible it would be.

Another argument that ignores my point...why would people work hard if not to acquire wealth? That's the genius of capitalism, it flowers from the darker aspects of the human mind where self-serving greed abounds and blocks out the light of community and brotherhood (how's that for overstated and flowery prose?)...in all seriousness though, it is accurate albeit a bit self-indulgent. Again, back to basics...we are taught from birth on that the purpose of life is to succeed by accumulating the most possessions...wealth and power. I believe that a successful life is otherwise measured therefore I view wealth and power as tools to be shared. Communism is a word...a term coined by a bunch of old men, it's meaningless. A society where everyone has an equal share may someday actually evolve...I'm not holding my breath. But anyway, to answer the question...people may someday work hard to build a better, safer , kinder world for everyone...realizing that "everyone" includes them!

Pete what planet are you on? If anything the difference between rich and poor gets wider year by year. It would take a revolution, and a violent one at that, to redistribute the kind of wealth gap there is now....

Actually, while a violent revolution would possibly succeed in temporarily shifting wealth around, only a change in people's ideology could sustain it. As long as people buy the two big lies of civilization: (1) some folks are better/more deserving than others and (2) possessions and power are the purpose of life, there will never be an equal distribution of anything EXCEPT misery!

Realistically, some people can't get out of their own way and will be poor no matter what.

But its what a society values. If a movie star gets 25 million per movie and a librarian makes 25k, we obvioulsy believe the movie star has more value to society.

The issue has much more to do with the fact that the people at the top take more than ever before, they were always rich, but the numbers now vs. the middle class are staggering. But I can't see how anything changes.

I don't believe that Randy, people aren't poor because they are inferior, there are a million reasons behind every person's outcome. I do agree about the gap and again...only a change in ideology will change anything!

I don't think that the quality of life would improve for people in a society that was set up for everyone to have an equal share. I think the quality of life would decrease for practically everyone. The productivity for such a society would decrease so much that I think the quality of life would probably decrease for everyone.

I strongly disagree with your contention that "we are taught from birth that the purpose of life is to succeed by accumulating the most possessions....wealth and power". Were you taught that? I certainly wasn't. I don't know anyone who was taught that. Maybe a few people were taught that. Donald Trump seems like he may have been taught that. LOL.

Anyway, I think that if you did a poll in this country, I think you would find the opposite. I think that most people would say that money is important, but I think very few would say that it is the most important thing to them.

Inferior is a strong word, I sure didn't use it....But the fact that IQ is a relative predictor of future success shouldn't be simply discarded. If you have an IQ of 80 and aren't an athlete, you won't be rich. Done deal. If its 150, you may not be rich either, but you'll have a shot.

By the way, I dont think being rich is the end all of how to rate success as a human being. But since so many do, we might as well go with it in this thread.

Again, you are linking productivity to personal gain while denying that is what we are taught...yes, I was and so is everyone...perhaps more subtle than I make it sound but totally pervasive!

Well, if you use wealth as the measure you are skewing the results from my point of view but lets discuss that...an "idiot sevant" can have an IQ of 60 and end up wealthy. Mine is over 150 and I'm poor as a church mouse so there are always exceptions. My argument is that we judge a person's value by their possessions and apply labels based on same. If we viewed everyone as equal, then there would be no reason to rank them and "poor" would be a meaningless term. I believe in free will but realize we are molded by our experiences (environment) so nobody is destined to "always be" anything. Again...this is my opinion, my view...and it is a minority view!

EXACTLY the reason I don't have one!:rolleyes:

One of the great things about this country is that even people who don't make a lot of money here, still have a pretty good quality of life. Most people I know that are even in the lowest paying jobs have some if not all of the following things: an apartment, a car, a television, a VCR, a telephone, a cell phone, a computer, etc.

If you are at the bottom of the econmic level in most countries, you are not going to have those things. If you are poor in Afghanistan, you probably live in a mud hut with no electricity.

The bottom line is that our system may not be perfect. There are plenty of inequities. But I think our system is better than any other system and I think the quality of life would decrease for everyone if you tried to have a society where everyone had an equal share. In a soceity like that, people would not have computers, cars, and cell phones and stuff like that.

Somer: You're about my age and our circumstances are close but I would heartily disagree that we were taught that from birth! My earliest memories are of my duty to my fellow man and treatment of such. I worked my butt off during H.S. for cash,and usually had a 2nd job to add income while I raised my family. I'm not envious of Gates,or Walton,Pickens,Buffet,Paul Allen or any of the many people that busted their butts to excel in their fields. The money to these Folks was always secondary,I believe, and I vigorously defend their right to keep much of what they've earned. For some reason you view them as malevolent or avaristic. The rich are not responsible for this societys' ills...and the burden to fix what's broken should be shared by all men and women of the "community" of our society. As our Constitution states, all men are created equal..but it's true that all don't have the same opportunity to succeed. That's where the framework of our society steps in and gets people educated and trained. The purpose of this is to enable people to take care of themselves and to follow whatever their dreams may be. Some dreams are harder to accomplish than others...and there are far too many people who blame others for their failings /lack of success. I could go on..but you get my drift, and the only idiot savant I know who made any money was the Rainman