Wednesday, April 04, 2007

piece of pie

(wonder about the breakdown in taxes?)

4 comments:

rev. billy bob gisher ©2008 said...

a better point was made about medicaid cuts and tax cuts. this kinda washes out here. an even better point would be the lack of opportunity for the lower rungs to move up, ie:crapass education.

daveawayfromhome said...

I'm not sure what my point here was, aside from the obscenity of half the people in the U.S. having to live on less than 3% of the money floating around the country (as of 2001, that is, it's less now), and yet the rich bitch about how unfair the desire to tax them more is. I might sympathize with the rich if they earned all that money by the sweat of their brows, but mostly they make money off the sweat of others' brows.
Let them stop fighting pay increases and health care for the masses, let them stop fucking us with arcane credit rules, let them start educating us for the benefit of all rather than exploiting us for their own (excess) gain.
You tax a person making $40,000 at 5%, and you leave him $38,000 to live on. Not so easy, though I suppose not that much harder, either.
You tax a person making $40,000,000 at 75%, and he still has $10,000,000 to live on. Boo-hoo for the rich guy, 'cause I dont think you'll convince anyone that he's got it rough (and wouldnt you love to see Donald Trump or Paris Hilton try to make it through one year on $40,000. How'd that be for a "reality" show).

As for the education situation, the lack of funding for education in this country (and I'm talking about money for actual education, not testing and consulting and fancy high-tech gizmos and bloated administrative bureaucracies) is one of the more self-destructive things we're doing to ourselves as a nation.
It strikes me as being akin to the way white restaurants acted by not allowing black patrons - black money spends as well as anyone elses, to not take their business just denied the business money. Poor people, once educated, can, potentially, create a lot more money in the economy, much of which will make it back into the pockets of the already rich (as I think the pie chart indicates). It certainly wont cost the rich anything but some tax dollars, and would be a good investment for the country.
Most annoyingly, Republican-types "justify" tuition raises at public schools to astronomical levels by saying that it's "still an investment that pays off in the end", begging the question as to why the State doesnt make that investment in the first place.

rev. billy bob gisher ©2008 said...

damn you got a serious vien of ore there...soundbites dave, soundbites. i get you, but i read the collected works of shakesphere on the toilet. john q. needs a soundbite dave.

john q. needs you dave. hear him calling in the desert?

daveawayfromhome said...

sound bites? Hmmm, tricky. I do babble much better.