Yes, I understood his concept he repeats ad nauseam, and it's bollocks. Any fool who keeps spewing this ridiculous shit and believes that the "rich don't use [infrastructure] more than the poor" and that "the military protects all citizens equally" is wearing some ginormous blinders and has multiple screws loose. :)

productivity as an economic concept is very different from the lay definition. money invested in bonds or securities can be very "productive" in terms of generating wealth, but it's not as if the investors (or even many of the companies being invested in) are actually doing anything useful.

JL

You only get rich by being productive.

Spew alert! This is sincerely barking mad.

I got to hand it to you, Stucki. This qualifies without doubt as the outright stupidest thing I have read on this blog. :)

Actually, I'm a citizen of Lower Slobovia. (I'm guessing you're too young to be familiar with Al Capp geography, so forgive the joke.)

ALL my responsess to you are "Honest", even the ones you can't relate to.

Citizenship means to me the obligation to take care of my dependants so they don't become a burden on my fellow citizens.

What does it mean to you?

I used the term "punitive" in my [10] only in regard to estate taxation, in response to your "accident of birth" terminology. It was arbitrary usage on my part, and it probably has no connection to the question of de-incentivising the highly productive. That's a whole other question in its own right.

In the case of transfers of estate wealth, the highly productive person is by definition dead, so de-incentivisation isn't applicable.

If you prefer, re-read my usage to be "excessive" or some such rather than "punitive".

This is a serious question and, like an idiot, I'm hoping you'll treat it as such and answer honestly - or don't answer at all.

What does it mean to you to be a citizen of America, or of whatever country you call home?

I'm not surprised that this can be a foreign concept, especially in the case of taxation, because very few political leaders in the US, especially during the course of the last few decades, have ever really attempted to talk about taxation in terms other than strictly partisan.

Unfortunately, I don't expect that situation to change for America or Americans.

in your view, what makes taxation "punitive?" that term in psychology means likely to result in the decrease of a behavior. at least from that perspective, i see no evidence that higher tax rates have made those who are rich do either more or less of whatever it was that made them rich. in what other way is it punitive?

the liberal point of view is that society as a whole is entitled to (and will benefit more from) a larger percentage of the gains that come to those who are well-off. at least from the benefit standpoint there's evidence to support that point of view. the conservative point of view is that people are entitled to what they own, irrespective of how they got it, and the government should only be allowed to take the bare minimum required for mutual needs (needs in the economic sense).

i find myself somewhat in the center of those positions, but would very much like for the government (as you pointed out) to do a better job discerning between wealth that is justly earned, unjustly taken, and received by chance.

JL

As I stated above, fairness lies in the eye of the beholder, whether its taxation or loopholes fairness that's under discussion.

No rich person ever got rich by "exploiting unfair tax loopholes". You only get rich by being productive. Exploiting tax loopholes doesn;t increase your earnings, it only keeps the greedy folk from stealing quite as much of what you have earned.

Re "infrastructure", as I pointed out in my [7] above, we do "all use infrastructure", but the rich don't use it more than the poor. The military protects all citizens equally, why should high earners pay for more of it? Same with highways, etc. We all drive on the same roads, why should the rich pay for more of it when there are far fewer of them???

For the most part, well said, and I basically agree.

However, "accident of birth" is not something that in and of itself justifies punitive taxation. Why shouldn't legitimately successful and highly productive people get to pass along their savings to descendants?

Also, income/wealth taxation is not the cure for "aggression, deceit, crime and exploitation". The cure for criminal activity should be prosecution and/or confiscation, not income or wealth taxation.

economic fairness is what's lacking these days. single payer health care would go a long way to alleviate this. but stacking the deck in favor of the rich is still a stacked deck. it's not talent, or skill, or ability when all you're doing is exploiting unfair tax loopholes.
full disclosure i grew up in the 50s and 60s and am in the 3%ers. society was way more cohesive with those tax laws. and the underlying assumption has to return, as noted above, that we all use infrastructure.

because they have more talent, skill, ability, motivation, ambition, etc

that is sometimes the case, other times not the case. there are many ways people can become rich - some relating to talent, ambition, thrift, risk-taking and wits, others relating to aggression, deceit, crime, exploitation, luck or accident of birth. any generalization that assumes "the rich" must belong to one or the other of those groups is propaganda.

since the government cannot easily discern between those who justly earn their fortunes and those who come by them through other means, there needs to be a balanced pattern of taxation that allows those in the former category to continue to thrive while placing reasonable limits on those in the latter categories.

JL

The concept of "Fair", much like the concept of beauty, lies notoriously in the "eye of the beholder".

Rich people are rich (and, by-the-way, I am definitely NOT rich) because they have more talent, skill, ability, motivation, ambition, etc than the non-rich, NOT because they are "greedy". But they don't get to drive on better public roads, nor do they get more defending by the military, than do poor people.

The desire of the unrich (unproductive) to share in the fruits of the labor of the rich, (productive) is, ironically, simply a manifestation of simple greed.

I say "ironic", because Dems/Libs think the unwillingness of the productive to share the fruits of their labors is the definition of greed, but it's really the other way about!

There are the rich, and then there are the people who are trying very hard to be rich.

Why not talk about fair taxation ...

Well, I said it better the first time around … :(

I'm posting it again, and my apologies if some comments were lost in the process...

-CW