Posted on 08/09/2015 6:51:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
"We all end up working for people who are more successful than us," the presidential hopeful said.
Asked if his flat tax plan would further separate the haves from the have-nots, GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) said Sunday that income inequality is the result of some Americans working harder than others, rather than economic policies.
"The thing is, income inequality is due to some people working harder and selling more things," Paul told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "If people voluntarily buy more of your stuff, you'll have more money."
Paul has proposed what he calls a "flat and fair tax," which would put a flat 14.5 percent tax on all types of income. An analysis by the Tax Foundation found that under the plan, households earning more than $1 million per year would see their after-tax incomes rise by 13 percent. Households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 per year, meanwhile, would see their after-tax income rise only by 3 percent.
"Doesn't your plan massively increase income inequality?" Wallace asked.
"It's a fallacious notion to say, 'Oh, rich people get more money back in a tax cut,'" Paul responded. "If you cut taxes 10 percent, 10 percent of a million is more than 10 percent of a thousand dollars. So, obviously, people who pay more in taxes will get more back."(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
Kinda like Yeb hitting everyone up for $$$$$$
No deductions, credits, loopholes, no nothing
(Robert De Niro voice) "NAH-THANG!"
More like work smarter. A lot of very hard jobs don’t pay much.
Paul blew it out his rear by attacking Trump over nothing!! I use to like him BUT HE IS HISTORY with me. Good BYE sir!!
The phrasing does not work. People do not make more money necessarily by working harder. People picking tomatoes in a field work plenty hard, many minimum or close to minimum wage jobs require you to work hard, and are exhausting. The trick is to provide something of value that a business is willing to pay you a lot to do, or provide good or service that many individuals or businesses are willing to pay a lot for. If your skill set is something that can be replaced instantly with little training cost by any monkey off the street, then though you may work your a$$ off, you will never command a good salary. Though even in that lowest of positions, though not always perfect, if you show working your a$$ off, with an obvious desire to learn more, and self initiative to progress further, most well run businesses will recognize that, and will do everything to facilitate moving up to the next level. Everybody starts at the bottom, and it is possible to return to the bottom from high up because of circumstances, but unless one has severe mental deficienies, it is completely voluntary to remain at the bottom for an extended period of time
” said Sunday that income inequality is the result of some Americans working harder than others, rather than economic policies. “
True to a certain point. Certain things wouldnt have existed without certain economic policies.
Some examples:
Ethanol plants
Solyndra
Tesla
SpaceX
Importing Tomatoes and Watermelon from Mexico
Sugar prices
The entire agriculture industry as it exists now
ObamaCare has done wonders to further income inequality.
Some income inequality comes from people working harder than others, some from people working just as hard in jobs that the market has put a premium on as others do in jobs for which this is not the case (e.g. professional athletes vs. special forces operators), some comes from corruption or abuse of the law to create market advantage (e.g. Congress exempting itself from insider-trading laws, or managers giving each other pay-packages without any real relationship to delivering shareholder value — if you doubt this is done, remember what “golden parachute” means — or abusive uses of patent law, or suborning Congress or state legislatures to create unfair market advantages), and some from ancestral income inequality from any of these causes.
This is one area in which it is important for the right to oppose the left not simply by turning their schema of “rich bad, poor good” upside down, but by actually rejecting the schema entirely. Becoming rich or maintaining wealth by working hard at an honest job or by investing well, by offering a good product or service at fair prices or by managing a company so as to deliver good shareholder value without corrupting the political process or the market to do it, are all praiseworthy. Becoming rich by abusing a fiduciary position — be it the insider-trading Congressman, the CEO who drove shareholder value into the ground, but did just fine for himself because his bonuses weren’t based on actual shareholder value or his “golden parachute” payed out when he was booted, or the sort of investment banker who calls his clients “muppets” and manages their portfolios for the benefit of his own bonus, not their wealth — is morally contemptible.
Likewise among the poor are those who are praiseworthy — the honest laborer, the monk or nun, the struggling artist who works a part-time job to keep body and soul together while painting, composing, trying to break into acting — and those who are blameworthy, the disability grifters, the folks for whom the subsidies for out-of-wedlock births have become a way of life, the genuinely lazy.
We need to completely reject the left’s schema that attaches moral worth to income levels qua income levels and frets about income inequality.
There is indeed a problem with the income distribution in America, and it is that the dishonest, whether rich or poor, are raking in too much of the income, while too little of it goes to the honest.
There is indeed a problem with the income distribution in America, and it is that the dishonest, whether rich or poor, are raking in too much of the income, while too little of it goes to the honest.”
That deserves repeating. The left work hard at *not* making moral distinctions. For them, a thief is “good” if he gives them money or furthers their cause, and an honest man is *bad* if he works against them.
Beer Economics - Explaining Taxes With Beer
Suppose that every evening, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this :-
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7.
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.
So, that’s what they decided to do....... The 10 men drank in the bar every evening and were quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner said, “Since you are all such good customers, I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20”.
Drinks for the 10 men would now cost just £80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? The paying customers? How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.
Therefore, the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing.
The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a pound out of the £20 saving,” declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man, but he got £10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a pound too.
It’s unfair - he got 10 times more benefit than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy always win!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists, labour unions and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics.
And of course, a quick Google search for that finds a British-cized version :p But the point remains the same!
That is only part of the story. Today, the ROI on a dollar invested in lobbying and campaign contributions is greater than the ROI on real investments. The income of the ruling class and its rent-seekers has skyrocketed during this administration. The income of everyone else has fallen.
Woh! That’s definitely racist.
I hear dog whistles!
I lean more toward the “fair tax” - no IRS, no government snooping into every detail of your life, no audits, no forms to fill out, and everybody pays.
Exactly right.
I think every baseball player should hit .250. We should redistribute hits so they do.
So much has to do with the accident of birth. It gets you better prepared and you can pretty much be an idiot but still go through a good college due to who your parents are and create your own connections. A great many hard working industrious intelligent Americans have to work at a young age to help make ends meet. They absolutely don’t have to catch a break but instead will toil in obscurity their entire lives.
You can, in direct response to your statement, work smart but unless someone helps lift you up, say promote you instead of their own kid, never make headway.
Harder, and/or smarter. Sometimes just luckier, but that is a minimal portion.
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