[quote=asianautica]
I love how you say “Welcome to life” and then want the rich to subsidize the poor because it’s not fair. I totally agree that life’s not fair, so deal with it. We all know the system and the system doesn’t prevent anyone from becoming rich, if you want to make more money either work twice as hard to get the capital or invest and save more diligently. We all can become rich. I know many immigrants who came here with nothing more than the clothes on the back and many of them became rich. They did it by extreme hard work, live extremely frugal, and study very hard. All this can be done within 15-20 years. So don’t tell me it can’t be done as a minority. Increasing taxes as you get richer just make it that much harder for those who are in the upper middle class trying to break free of the middle class and have their money working for them instead of them working for their money.[/quote]
You’re missing the point. The point I’m making is not that it is not at this point possible or not possible for hard work to pay off. It certainly is.
The point I am making is that under our current system, being “fair” INEVITABLY leads to an inequitable distribution between rich and poor, making it more and more difficult for that “vertical social mobility” you point out to occur, as more money and power accumulate in the hands of the extremely well off, and less and less is paid towards those closer to the bottom. As more and more capital accumulates at the top, it becomes more difficult for those closer to the bottom to break into the top – entry barriers rise (startup fees for businesses, educational fees, etc), entry level jobs pay less and less, more mid level jobs are outsourced, and numerous other issues arise.
This has already had significant effects. In my parents generation, the US was truly the “Land of Opportunity” – at that time, the US was one of the TOP ranked countries in terms of vertical social mobility. In ONE generation it has dropped from being one of the top ranked, to being one of the bottom ranked (ahead of only the UK in the major western democracies). Why? Because fewer and fewer jobs exist (relative to population size) which allow for upward mobility, education (a key component to upward mobility) is FAR more expensive now, less and less opportunities arise for small businesses (much fewer “Main St” type businesses can operate in the era of the Big Box extreme low pay/low margin stores), etc.
And increasing taxes as you get richer is INFINITELY better than increasing taxes as you get poorer, and is still a better option than increasing taxes all around. Why? Because if those people having a hard time breaking into the very upper crust from upper middle can’t do it with a slight tax increase, then they CERTAINLY couldn’t make the jump from the middle-middle to the upper-middle class…and the poor, well, lets just forget about them entirely.
The rich subsidize the poor and the middle class because it is the TRANSFER of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich which leads to the rich being rich IN THE FIRST PLACE.
