Dude, instead of social security I want to keep it and invest it myself. If it were truly a “fund” like any other retirement account, why isnt there an option to opt out?
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This is so wrong I just wanted to ignore it. So basically you dont believe in private property at all.
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That’s correct. I was going to say something, but didn’t feel like wasting my time.
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Fair enough. Some people work for the benefits/retirement, not the salary. That happens a lot at places like Verizon - lousy work environment but good retirement. Other people are just goofy. Real life example - the wife of a former employee of mine. She was working as a CNA for $10.hr, 40 minute drive each way. Not terrible money at the time for that job and region of the country. She got offered a job doing the same thing, at a nicer facility, 10 minutes from the house, starting at $2 and hour more. She did not take it, and did not even use it to leverage a raise. Because she simply didn’t want to change location and make new work friends and all that. They needed the money, because they had blown through all their savings while she was on maternity leave (because she wasn’t at the place long enough to qualify for paid leave - because they decided to get pregnant without doing the math and should have waited ONE month more). The pay is frequently not the driving force.
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Do illegal work then. Now you’re not having social security taken out. I wish I didn’t have to have a drivers license to legally drive. But I do. Again it’s an overwhelmingly popular thing in our society. Feel free to find the few who agree with you can start a group complaint club? Why can’t Sony release their games and movies to me for free? That would be cool.
It’s not even remotely wrong at least not in my knowledge of the current law. Can you sue and win? If so why haven’t you? Now private property can’t be real if taxation exists? God damn how do you tinfoils keep up with all of this?
Has income tax not held up in court time and time again?
Because they don’t. Welcome to the lesson that is history. It’s cheaper to force some earning to trickle into a fund and then pay out later than get stuck with mountains of indigent poor planners on the dole.
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I was being a little facetious. Hard to pull off in type.
Well that obviously makes it moral and good.
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Ok. Well we’re a nation of laws and we elect people to represent us to make those laws and in a time where people can’t seem to agree on much they almost all agree they like that.
We won’t agree all agree on what is moral and what isn’t so framing the argument on that seems a bit sketchy to me. Couldn’t we say the overwhelming majority finds this moral and enjoys this law?
We could say a majority finds it moral, but that doesn’t make it so. That’s why we aren’t a democracy. History has shown majorities do horrific things to minorities.
That’s true.
And we shouldn’t forget the current awful injustice of having to explain that taxation is theft on an internet message board while living in a society that has had it since it was founded.
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When people bring up slavery, and the times historically the minority has been trampled in these type of debates I find the comparison a bit odd. It’s why I kept saying to Chris in the coronavirus thread that if he was truly worried about his ability to survive he wouldn’t be posting a hundred times on t-nation.
Edit: didn’t see the deletion in time.
Deleted my post because I didn’t want to say anything, but I’ll respond once more for this…
I don’t believe he indicated he was worried about his ability to survive; I believe he was worried about the ability to survive of the businesses that have been forced to close. Anyway, do you think people don’t look for sources of comfort in stressful times? Do people in truly terrible conditions not sing songs or turn to other diversions?
What would Jesus do?
So I deleted this post the first time and I think I’m going to rewrite it now…
I think we need another category here. On one hand, I don’t care at all about how much money Trump or Bezos or any one else has. It does not affect me and I refuse to get butthurt that they got super rich. On the other hand, and this is just me talking, I KNOW that there is a large percentage of small businesses and self employed folks who would absolutely benefit from well designed (cough) tax cuts…small businesses are the actual lifeblood and I think that “trickle down” for lack of a better word works much better when the businesses are local owned and involved in a community…
There are ~20 million small business with less than 20 employees. And for the freelancers/self-employed (also a business), which number more than 15 million, about 60% of them are unincorporated.
For example, if you’re an employee and you make ~$40k, it is very likely you’re getting a refund when filing taxes. You’re still paying through withholding etc., but less + a refund. A self-employed person making 40k has to pay about $9,000 in federal taxes (will vary obviously). Well, traditional “trickle down” tax cuts never help these folks enough. Everything obviously helps to a degree of course… But I’ll tell you for sure the SBs and self-employed netting 30-100k could use them. Because you’re almost never living off of all your “net” profit. You automatically have a 7.2% higher tax rate than anyone else because you pay the other half of FICA that normally goes to the corporation.
The problem with “trickle down” for me, is that these people aren’t targeted in any meaningful way. I think it needs to be addressed.
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Despite posts that may seem contrary I really don’t care that people are super rich. I think we have a system that is designed largely (at least last 50 years maybe) that benefits those people at the top. I think it’s pretty pro corporation and that big business and the very wealthy have massive influence in our government. It’s mind-blowing to me that big banks wrote pieces of our legislation designed to curb their dangerous behavior. That’s the type of government I want to get rid of or adjust. Not taxation is theft anarchy forever.
Knowing these things attacking the poor irks me. Attacking programs that may not be perfect, but benefit the poor irks me. Not from a reform sense, more from a “look at these takers” sense. So Jeff Bezos being rich doesn’t bother me. Thinking that poor people on food stamps is the biggest problem we face does. And that things would be so much better for society not if we evaluated if our policies tilted towards the wealthy, but if we just didn’t have programs designed to help the vulnerable.
I think what you’re talking about I can get on board with quickly. Tax cuts that are targeted at those who can most benefit from them. Not tax cuts aimed at the wealthiest people and businesses with the idea that the money is going to eventually go to the working class.
We have a massive bill over coronavirus that I oppose a lot of stuff in. The biggest things I oppose are the type of money that go to the biggest companies. Companies that don’t even worry about saving for a rainy day because they figure government will bail them out. To me that’s the type of stuff to focus on. “I saw a family on food stamps that was fat” seems pretty trivial in comparison.
But I am definitely shaped big time by working with the poor. I
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Taxation is theft when its redistribution.
