Here’s How to Screw the Rich

Tax the rich into the middle class?  Yeah, no.  That’s not how it works.

Sounds like Michael Arrington knows almost as much about marginal tax rates as he does about technology.

We’ve always lived in a top down society. Those with the most have the most burden. The only thing new these days is that we have a middle class of inbetween people at all. Used to be you were either poor or rich, no inbetweens, and those rich people paid for everything and were taxed to hell because the government knew they were the only ones with anything in the first place. It’s how Rome operated for one.

So the slaves of Rome had less of a burden than the ancestral nobility?
Okay. All y’all suck.

What most people don’t understand about the “hyper intelligent” supporting a form of redistribution is that when you understand how money works you understand it is a necessity to redistribute when the scale becomes to unbalanced. 

Most people think of money in a vacuum, as if money and wealth can grow continuously with no limit. That is simply not true. The concept of money still has to work within the finite structure of resources we have available. When a group of people hoard money they are also hoarding the ability to acquire resources. When the amount of available money for the rest of the population is spread too thin, then, prices must drop on most consumer goods (resources) so people can afford to buy them. Sellers of consumer goods can not make a living only selling to the rich (who often own the goods anyway). They also can not make a living if the profit margin on producing and selling goods is too low. When this happens the only way to allow people to buy goods at a price that will allow for profit is to pump more money into the economy. This is usually done by simply “printing” more money (very little of it is actually printed but the concept is the same). When more money is “printed” the relative value of each dollar goes down (inflation). If you have $100 and it can now buy $95 worth of goods you wont notice as much. On the other hand, if you have 1 Billion and you lose the same 5% purchasing power you have lost 50 Million Dollars of purchasing power, practically over night due to inflation. Raising the top tax rate from 34% to 39% will have only the effect of taxing future income and will (if done properly) slow inflation down and leave much more of the money you already have relatively untouched. Not to mention the fact that if the tax money is used to make life easier on the middle class then they will be able to purchase more goods and the growth in sales for many industries will even offset a portion of the tax increase. There is much more involved, including tax loopholes and the strength of the dollar against foreign currencies but, basically that is the man reason the intelligent rich support slightly higher taxes. (possibly along with a moral component).

From the article:
“The super rich love to talk about higher taxes on the rich because it’s a competitive barrier protecting them from competition. If the people making a lot of money today have to pay much higher taxes, they probably won’t ever accumulate enough wealth to be “super rich.””

This is when I began to suspect that the author was being satirical. Turned out he wasn’t.

When you say, “used to be” in order to refer to ancient civilizations, you lose all credibility.

use a condom 

In terms of taxes, they didn’t pay any… so yes, in that one regard it can be said that Roman slaves has less of a burden than the ancestral nobility.

If you are one that believes paying taxes is such a terrible thing to be forced to do, then I suppose you might see that as somehow offsetting the rather obvious differences between being a member of the slave class as opposed to the aristocratic class. In that case, I would politely suggest that you go die in a fire so the rest of us don’t have to put up with any more of your mindless Randian bullshit.

As BK mentioned, we’re talking financially and slaves. If we start talking about who works the most for the least reward, well our poor class definitely share that with their slave class and had the most burden in that regard.

there is no separate agency in the events that happen in my life(world). Its all created by me, is what I keep telling myself.

The poor don’t hate the rich because they have more. We hate the rich who are greedy, usurp resources, and monopolize the system so that we don’t get paid what our work is worth.

More or less.