re: #156 brownbagj

I do see where you are coming from. I just think how we approach it needs to keep in mind that the rich are no better, or worse, than the poor as far as humanity is concerned.

I think, personally, that we all own a share of making this country work. Some can afford to have a larger share.

But it does seem, to me, that many want to tax the rich as some sort of moral play instead of what is actually good for the economy. As if attaining wealth has some sort of negative connotation. It does not.

I have heard many pontificate that we should tax the rich - they can afford it! That is not a good reason. If we can show that the government will use that money wisely, that it will not go to more waste but actually make a difference then a positive argument can be made.

I am not against that not anything you said. I AM against demonizing the “rich” to make it more palatable to take more earnings from them.

That’s all.

Wealth and power tend to concentrate. You notice now that over 50% of the all the wealth in the country is owned by the top 2% (the figures change constantly depending who you ask). In 1955, a CEO typically made about 50 times more than the average employee of his firm. Today, it is now 500% more. To those of us in the bottom 25%, it looks increasingly like a rigged game where what family you are born in is far more important than how smart you are or how industrious you are. The meritocracy myth of America where anybody can do anything is really just that: a myth. The overwhelming likelihood is that if you are born into a poor family, the best you will manage statistically speaking is get into the lower middle class. If you are born into a rich family, you will almost certainly stay rich. You will go to a 34,000$ a year pre-K and elementary academy, and then to Andover or something similar before going to a top 25 university where you make the social connections that will profit you through your life. Those social connections are the key…and poor or working class/middle class people…no matter how smart and motivated…do not have access to them.

We all love the stories of the down on his luck poor person who makes it big through determination and pluck, but we also know that those stories are literally million to one long shots.