The real reason for street protests in the US

[RVonse]

Open question: could someone not come up with some sort of effective and safe and fast-acting temporary tranquilliser darts for humans, perhaps in conjunction with literally indelible dye?

I’m not saying it would be a silver bullet. But better than shooting people dead. Just capture them. Add in video footage. Voila. Looters (some at least) caught and can be punished.

Could even add in a tiny tracker device, in case other looters carry away their unconscious comrade. Not that looters necessarily see each other as comrades. ������

Only to be an option in severe and justifiable circumstances, where other options not feasible.

What options are warranted for the real looters in our economy? Those at the top directly tied to the fed who are paid to borrow money (negative and or zero interest) from the fed while those at the bottom are charged 20% credit card to 1000% pay day loans. Those are the criminals who are doing the most damage right now.

 

[Toni]

There certainly seems to be something more going on that some ex-con dying while restrained.

I think a lot of it is Corona Madness though.

For most human beings, the visual of another human being being murdered by having a full grown adult kneel on his neck for nearly 9 minutes while he cries out for his mother does tend to provoke some sense of outrage. Particularly when the adult is supposed to serve and protect.

 

[ruby sparks]

Open question: could someone not come up with some sort of effective and safe and fast-acting temporary tranquilliser darts for humans, perhaps in conjunction with literally indelible dye?

I’m not saying it would be a silver bullet. But better than shooting people dead. Just capture them. Add in video footage. Voila. Looters (some at least) caught and can be punished.

Could even add in a tiny tracker device, in case other looters carry away their unconscious comrade. Not that looters necessarily see each other as comrades. ������

Only to be an option in severe and justifiable circumstances, where other options not feasible.

What options are warranted for the real looters in our economy? Those at the top directly tied to the fed who are paid to borrow money (negative and or zero interest) from the fed while those at the bottom are charged 20% credit card to 1000% pay day loans. Those are the criminals who are doing the most damage right now.

Sounds like a potentially very good point, imo.

 

[ruby sparks]

Although I am not familiar with the exact details.. And had never heard of negative interest.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Tax rates were never 70%. The left loves to toss around those high numbers while ignoring the fact that back then the tax code contained loopholes you could drive a 18 wheeler through, coupled with a lack of computer power to cross check things and expose cheating.

Policies like you espouse would severely damage our economy.

Not only were there sufficient loopholes to ensure that the top bracket was seldom paid, those who suddenly and unexpectedly came into wealth had neither the time nor the training to use those those loopholes were just about the only ones who paid the top bracket. As a result, these rates actually prevented movement between economic classes instead of facilitated it.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Although I am not familiar with the exact details.. And had never heard of negative interest.

Negative rates are rates below zero. The Fed rate now is a quarter of one percent, not negative. However, that's more of an advantage to the borrower than the lender, because of the very low ROI.

Corporate debt costs more, bonds are averaging 3.89%. CC debt is unsecured, so it's much more expensive. Even so, RVonse has a point.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Open question: could someone not come up with some sort of effective and safe and fast-acting temporary tranquilliser darts for humans, perhaps in conjunction with literally indelible dye?

It's virtually certain to be impossible--the problem is one of dosage. Most of the time the dart will go into fat or muscle from which the chemical only enters the blood stream slowly--if you want fast acting that means you need to use a lot more than what's needed to knock them out and now you're in overdose territory. Russia tried it with gas once (which has better control than darts) and killed most of the hostages.

I've heard of a means used on wildlife but it's potentially lethal--something related to fenatyl and then quickly administer narcan once you have it captured. Too slow with the narcan and the animal dies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

First taxes do not take money out of the economy. They actually put money into the economy. They take money that rich people are not using and give it to others who spend it thus generating growth. The money always goes somewhere. Even if it reduces the deficit.

Error: Just because they're not spending the money on living doesn't mean they're not using it. They're using it on business, they're not storing it under their mattress. You're going to choke this off, new business will considerably decline and as attrition takes existing businesses there will not be replacements. You'll get a lack of innovation and ever-increasing consolidation which isn't good for the people.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/27/com...-led-by-buyback-monsters-like-home-depot.html

Home Depot received about $15 billion in tax cuts thanks to Trump. They gave about $300 million to workers, with the typical hourly wage worker getting about $300 or so. Managers got more. All based on their income. Many other companies did the same or similar.

Just because His Flatulence's tax cuts were an abomination doesn't mean the extreme tax rates of the past are a good thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Sorry, but this isn't correct. An increase in taxes does not equal higher distribution to workers. I'm not sure why you think this. To increase taxes decreases the deficit (which has some positive effects). But it doesn't directly lead to "money always going somewhere". There isn't a direct relationship between taxes and spending. In fact, often times spending goes up while taxes are going down.

It's the left's eternal quest to solve problems by eating the rich.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's a limit to how much you can lift anyone up when a tiny fraction of the population hoards most of the resources available to the entire population. I don't think any multi-billionaire needs to feel "brought down" if making even more billions becomes more difficult than it is now. For than matter, same for millionaires. I know enough people who have gone from broke/indebted startups to personal wealth in the millions, to know that making the first million is ten times harder than the 5th million and a hundred times harder than the 100th million. I don't personally know any billionaires, but my understanding is that the same thing applies.
It shouldn't be that way.

That "hoarding" includes most of the business. You want to eat the businesses, the result is catastrophe.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Tax rates were never 70%. The left loves to toss around those high numbers while ignoring the fact that back then the tax code contained loopholes you could drive a 18 wheeler through, coupled with a lack of computer power to cross check things and expose cheating.

Policies like you espouse would severely damage our economy.

Wrong. During the Eisenhower administration the top tax bracket nominal rate was 90%. It was 94% during WWII, and people in that top bracket were pursued and sometimes publicly demonized if they attempted to evade paying it during the war - it was a patriotism thing y'know. In the post-war years, more and more "cheating" opportunities were developed and instituted, and the marginal rate has fallen to less than half, while compliance with the 39% top rate is worse today among both individuals and Corporations (which are subject to an effective rate of only 18.6%) than it was in the 40s and 50s..
The results speak for themselves.
"Our economy" isn't threatened by a doubling of the top marginal rate, THEIR economy is.

The problem was doing things so it didn't look like income in the first place to be taxed. The tax code was full of loopholes. Almost nobody actually paid those rates.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What options are warranted for the real looters in our economy? Those at the top directly tied to the fed who are paid to borrow money (negative and or zero interest) from the fed while those at the bottom are charged 20% credit card to 1000% pay day loans. Those are the criminals who are doing the most damage right now.

Better to live within your means. Most borrowing isn't for necessities. You don't pay 20% on the loans for things you normally need to borrow for.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Although I am not familiar with the exact details.. And had never heard of negative interest.

Negative rates are rates below zero. The Fed rate now is a quarter of one percent, not negative. However, that's more of an advantage to the borrower than the lender, because of the very low ROI.

Corporate debt costs more, bonds are averaging 3.89%. CC debt is unsecured, so it's much more expensive. Even so, RVonse has a point.

Yea, lenders are are real trouble. Don't buy bank stocks today. They can't make money when their spread is so thin.

 

[SimpleDon]

Tax rates were never 70%. The left loves to toss around those high numbers while ignoring the fact that back then the tax code contained loopholes you could drive a 18 wheeler through, coupled with a lack of computer power to cross check things and expose cheating.

Policies like you espouse would severely damage our economy.

Wrong. During the Eisenhower administration the top tax bracket nominal rate was 90%. It was 94% during WWII, and people in that top bracket were pursued and sometimes publicly demonized if they attempted to evade paying it during the war - it was a patriotism thing y'know. In the post-war years, more and more "cheating" opportunities were developed and instituted, and the marginal rate has fallen to less than half, while compliance with the 39% top rate is worse today among both individuals and Corporations (which are subject to an effective rate of only 18.6%) than it was in the 40s and 50s..
The results speak for themselves.
"Our economy" isn't threatened by a doubling of the top marginal rate, THEIR economy is.

The problem was doing things so it didn't look like income in the first place to be taxed. The tax code was full of loopholes. Almost nobody actually paid those rates.

Do you have some examples of loopholes that existed then that don't exist now?

The neoliberal period hasn't been one of closing tax loopholes.

I think that the conversion of corporate profits over the last forty years into capital gains by corporations buying their own stock back has and still is shielding much more upper class income than any other tax loopholes you can name.

Do you think that the rich are less likely to take advantage of loopholes today then they were in the past when the top marginal rates were more than twice what they are today?

 

[Elixir]

Tax rates were never 70%. The left loves to toss around those high numbers while ignoring the fact that back then the tax code contained loopholes you could drive a 18 wheeler through, coupled with a lack of computer power to cross check things and expose cheating.

Policies like you espouse would severely damage our economy.

Wrong. During the Eisenhower administration the top tax bracket nominal rate was 90%. It was 94% during WWII, and people in that top bracket were pursued and sometimes publicly demonized if they attempted to evade paying it during the war - it was a patriotism thing y'know. In the post-war years, more and more "cheating" opportunities were developed and instituted, and the marginal rate has fallen to less than half, while compliance with the 39% top rate is worse today among both individuals and Corporations (which are subject to an effective rate of only 18.6%) than it was in the 40s and 50s..
The results speak for themselves.
"Our economy" isn't threatened by a doubling of the top marginal rate, THEIR economy is.

The problem was doing things so it didn't look like income in the first place to be taxed. The tax code was full of loopholes. Almost nobody actually paid those rates.

WUT? Loopholes, if they were an animal species, would be dominating the fucking planet now. What, specifically, are you talking about? There were mitigations available to the rich in the 40s and 50s but they were relatively minor. NOTHING like recent times. Amazon paid $0 in U.S. federal income tax on more than $11 billion in profits before taxes in 2018. NO company of the 1950s got away with that shit.

 

[southernhybrid]

It's true that the upper 1% never paid 90% in taxes. Most paid about 42%, after deductions. I wish that people would stop saying that the upper tax rate was 90%. It was 90% on paper, but very, very few actually paid that much. Still 42% is far more than most in the upper 1% pay these days.

https://slate.com/business/2017/08/the-history-of-tax-rates-for-the-rich.html

American progressives like to remember the mid–20th century as a time when the only thing higher than a Cadillac’s tail fin was the top marginal tax rate (which, during the Eisenhower years peaked above 90 percent for the very rich). Uncle Sam took 90 cents on the dollar off the highest incomes, and—as any good Bernie Sanders devotee will remind you—the economy thrived.

Conservatives, however, often try to push back on this version of history, pointing out that those staggeringly high tax rates existed mostly on paper; relatively few Americans actually paid them. Recently, the Tax Foundation’s Scott Greenberg went so far as to argue that “taxes on the rich were not that much higher” in the 1950s than today. Between 1950 and 1959, he notes, the highest earning 1 percent of Americans paid an effective tax rate of 42 percent. By 2014, it was only down to 36.4 percent—a substantial but by no means astronomical decline.

Tax rates do indeed need to be raised on the wealthiest Americans but 90% is unrealistic.

What was this thread supposed to be about again?

 

[SimpleDon]

Although I am not familiar with the exact details.. And had never heard of negative interest.

Negative interest rates exist when you have to pay a bank to keep your money, for example. Historically Swiss banks have charged non-Swiss fees for holding money in savings accounts.

We have very low interest rates now because there is so much financial capital available that money isn't "worth" as much. Money is chasing returns, not the other way around. Through their capture of the government, the media, and of academic economics the already rich have been so successful at creating income inequality that there is much more money in their hands that they want to use to make even more money from.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem was doing things so it didn't look like income in the first place to be taxed. The tax code was full of loopholes. Almost nobody actually paid those rates.

Do you have some examples of loopholes that existed then that don't exist now?

The neoliberal period hasn't been one of closing tax loopholes.

I think that the conversion of corporate profits over the last forty years into capital gains by corporations buying their own stock back has and still is shielding much more upper class income than any other tax loopholes you can name.

Do you think that the rich are less likely to take advantage of loopholes today then they were in the past when the top marginal rates were more than twice what they are today?

Google is your friend. Some examples of what I'm talking about here:

https://www.accountingtoday.com/art...-a-golden-age-of-tax-avoidance-by-movie-stars

Note that this is only addressing the legal schemes, not all the misreporting that the IRS was basically powerless to catch.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem was doing things so it didn't look like income in the first place to be taxed. The tax code was full of loopholes. Almost nobody actually paid those rates.

WUT? Loopholes, if they were an animal species, would be dominating the fucking planet now. What, specifically, are you talking about? There were mitigations available to the rich in the 40s and 50s but they were relatively minor. NOTHING like recent times. Amazon paid $0 in U.S. federal income tax on more than $11 billion in profits before taxes in 2018. NO company of the 1950s got away with that shit.

I believe companies in the 50s could have done the same thing Amazon is doing now. Amazon is using that $11b (I'm assuming your numbers are right) to buy up companies. That's done with pretax dollars, their income is reduced to basically $0 this way, no income, no taxes. The tax isn't completely vanishing, though--it's moved into increasing share prices and thus eventually will show up as capital gains.

 

[Elixir]

Loren:

In 1955 General Motors (the largest US Company at the time) became the first Company to pay over 1 billion in taxes.

The tax isn't completely vanishing, though--it's moved into increasing share prices and thus eventually will show up as capital gains.

The salient fact is that the tax that will theoretically come due at some time in the distant future is currently absent from the Federal coffers, forcing things like infrastructure projects that would benefit the general populace out of consideration, and further exacerbating the wealth gap that is at the root of so many of our problems. There is no assurance whatsoever that the Amazons of the world will ever tire of accumulating more and more wealth, creating "losers" to offset any money they extract from their operations and continually pushing out tax liability into a hazy "maybe" future.