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The article claims that America's poor are being fleeced. I'm not sure I agree with that. Rich people are paying less taxes than they used to, but it's hard to

by natrius 14y ago

The article claims that America's poor are being fleeced. I'm not sure I agree with that. Rich people are paying less taxes than they used to, but it's hard to make a case that the wealth of the poor has been forcibly redistributed to the rich (predatory lending aside).

EliRivers 14y ago
Didn't the country at large just drop enormous sums of money propping up failed companies full of rich people? Edit: Additionally, I think "wealth" and "money" are not the same thing and as such any argument that the wealth of the poor is being unfairly taken cannot be denied purely on the grounds that they don't pay much in tax. Their wealth is being taken before they even see a monetary representation of it.
- kevinpet 14y ago
  Since the poor and near-poor pay far less in taxes than the services they receive, that's irrelevant. The middle class and non-connected sort-of-wealthy are the ones getting screwed by the bailouts. Unless you assume that the poor have a right to what others earn (as opposed to simply the right to not get screwed and exploited by the wealthy, as the parent is talking about), then the poor have nothing to complain about as far as bailouts go.
  - natrius 14y ago
    "The middle class and non-connected sort-of-wealthy are the ones getting screwed by the bailouts." They're still better off with the bailouts than they'd be without them. They'd be even better off if policies that prevented the necessity of bailouts were in place back then. I hope the policy changes since then have been enough.
    - Lazare 14y ago
      ENOUGH?! To a first approximation, there has not been one policy change in the US that will reduce the necessity of future bailouts. (Basically, the single overwhelming issue is "too big to fail". To the limited extent that this has been addressed at all by regulatory changes such as Dodd-Frank, it has been to make the problem worse.)
      - natrius 14y ago
        Can you explain how the problem has been made worse? I used "hope" mainly because I don't know the details.
- maxharris 14y ago
  But that's a shame! The honest rich and the honest poor are all those that want no part of government bailouts or handouts. There are plenty of both, and we need a system based on individual rights so that rich and poor alike can all prosper as far as their own ability can take them. (We don't have individual rights today, and we haven't had a consistent adherence to the ideal in well over a century. For example, if you own a home, it can be taken under eminent domain. If you have built a giant enterprise on your own, it can be smashed by antitrust. If you have an innovative idea in nearly any field, you'll find that regulatory restriction make it difficult or impossible to execute, with a small number of exceptions like the computer industry.)
- natrius 14y ago
  Your edit makes no sense to me. Let's assume that you're saying that tax dollars went to bailouts that could've been used for social welfare. Even so, you can't assign the same wealth to multiple people. It's the taxpayers' wealth, not the potential future benefactors.
  - EliRivers 14y ago
    That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that wealth is not the same thing as dollars.
Hemospectrum 14y ago
"Forced" doesn't have to mean robbery at gunpoint. It just means that your range of choices conflicts with your needs. Making decisions at gunpoint is only the most obvious case. Consider food. You need a job in order to eat. You have to work a lot of hours (maybe with a long commute on top) in order to keep your job, or worse, to make enough money to afford your food and housing. You could save a lot of money and improve your health by cooking your own meals, but that's time consuming. Every minute you spend shopping for groceries or cooking your own food is one less minute you could spend at work. So you live on fast food and a big chunk of your paycheck goes to a fast food restaurant. Now consider the corporation itself. Its foremost incentive is to provide wealth to its owners. Any incentive to provide value to employees or customers is incidental to that goal, and there are of course ways to avoid doing that. Ideally it's just funneling as much money as possible from the customer to the shareholder. The poor can't afford to be shareholders. So where is the money going?
- natrius 14y ago
  "Every minute you spend shopping for groceries or cooking your own food is one less minute you could spend at work. So you live on fast food and a big chunk of your paycheck goes to a fast food restaurant." Do poor people resent fast food restaurants for providing them with cheaper food than they can make at home (including the cost of their time)? I presume they don't. Fast food restaurants provide a valuable product that poor people want to have. I wouldn't call that fleecing.
  - angersock 14y ago
    Come now, the restaurants have every incentive to make a food product that is valuable to poor folks while still keeping costs as low as possible. Also note that making shit food tasty while still being cheap is indeed fleecing, and the oldest trick in the book: sweet, fat, salty. Consider how cheap it is to make soft drinks, which are easily preferred by most folks, and yet how terrible they are for your health. Humans are hardwired to seek out certain flavors and characteristics, and large fast food joints do nothing but exploit this. Now, consider how the markets and government reward farmers for growing things that may be in excess of what people need (lol corn subsidies) and how they drive upwards prices of food perceived as a status symbol (compare "organic" produce or milk with the mass-produced varities). It's a pretty rigged system.

by natrius 14y ago

EliRivers 14y ago

Didn't the country at large just drop enormous sums of money propping up failed companies full of rich people? Edit: Additionally, I think "wealth" and "money" are not the same thing and as such any argument that the wealth of the poor is being unfairly taken cannot be denied purely on the grounds that they don't pay much in tax. Their wealth is being taken before they even see a monetary representation of it.

kevinpet 14y ago
Since the poor and near-poor pay far less in taxes than the services they receive, that's irrelevant. The middle class and non-connected sort-of-wealthy are the ones getting screwed by the bailouts. Unless you assume that the poor have a right to what others earn (as opposed to simply the right to not get screwed and exploited by the wealthy, as the parent is talking about), then the poor have nothing to complain about as far as bailouts go.
- natrius 14y ago
  "The middle class and non-connected sort-of-wealthy are the ones getting screwed by the bailouts." They're still better off with the bailouts than they'd be without them. They'd be even better off if policies that prevented the necessity of bailouts were in place back then. I hope the policy changes since then have been enough.
  - Lazare 14y ago
    ENOUGH?! To a first approximation, there has not been one policy change in the US that will reduce the necessity of future bailouts. (Basically, the single overwhelming issue is "too big to fail". To the limited extent that this has been addressed at all by regulatory changes such as Dodd-Frank, it has been to make the problem worse.)
    - natrius 14y ago
      Can you explain how the problem has been made worse? I used "hope" mainly because I don't know the details.
maxharris 14y ago
But that's a shame! The honest rich and the honest poor are all those that want no part of government bailouts or handouts. There are plenty of both, and we need a system based on individual rights so that rich and poor alike can all prosper as far as their own ability can take them. (We don't have individual rights today, and we haven't had a consistent adherence to the ideal in well over a century. For example, if you own a home, it can be taken under eminent domain. If you have built a giant enterprise on your own, it can be smashed by antitrust. If you have an innovative idea in nearly any field, you'll find that regulatory restriction make it difficult or impossible to execute, with a small number of exceptions like the computer industry.)
natrius 14y ago
Your edit makes no sense to me. Let's assume that you're saying that tax dollars went to bailouts that could've been used for social welfare. Even so, you can't assign the same wealth to multiple people. It's the taxpayers' wealth, not the potential future benefactors.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that wealth is not the same thing as dollars.

Hemospectrum 14y ago

"Forced" doesn't have to mean robbery at gunpoint. It just means that your range of choices conflicts with your needs. Making decisions at gunpoint is only the most obvious case. Consider food. You need a job in order to eat. You have to work a lot of hours (maybe with a long commute on top) in order to keep your job, or worse, to make enough money to afford your food and housing. You could save a lot of money and improve your health by cooking your own meals, but that's time consuming. Every minute you spend shopping for groceries or cooking your own food is one less minute you could spend at work. So you live on fast food and a big chunk of your paycheck goes to a fast food restaurant. Now consider the corporation itself. Its foremost incentive is to provide wealth to its owners. Any incentive to provide value to employees or customers is incidental to that goal, and there are of course ways to avoid doing that. Ideally it's just funneling as much money as possible from the customer to the shareholder. The poor can't afford to be shareholders. So where is the money going?

natrius 14y ago
"Every minute you spend shopping for groceries or cooking your own food is one less minute you could spend at work. So you live on fast food and a big chunk of your paycheck goes to a fast food restaurant." Do poor people resent fast food restaurants for providing them with cheaper food than they can make at home (including the cost of their time)? I presume they don't. Fast food restaurants provide a valuable product that poor people want to have. I wouldn't call that fleecing.
- angersock 14y ago
  Come now, the restaurants have every incentive to make a food product that is valuable to poor folks while still keeping costs as low as possible. Also note that making shit food tasty while still being cheap is indeed fleecing, and the oldest trick in the book: sweet, fat, salty. Consider how cheap it is to make soft drinks, which are easily preferred by most folks, and yet how terrible they are for your health. Humans are hardwired to seek out certain flavors and characteristics, and large fast food joints do nothing but exploit this. Now, consider how the markets and government reward farmers for growing things that may be in excess of what people need (lol corn subsidies) and how they drive upwards prices of food perceived as a status symbol (compare "organic" produce or milk with the mass-produced varities). It's a pretty rigged system.