Post by Bubbles_Few on Oct 21, 2008 14:44:03 GMT -8
Yeah I know, big surprised. I'm confused.
I'm on hold with the phone company and I'm cruising the web while I wait...
Am I going crazy? I really thought that you guys--and me--were the ones who constituted 99% of our "countries."
As a writer, I'm very aware when people start using words carelessly, like their meanings are interchangeable. It's a strange thing that there's always this chirping by billionaires about "socialism," whenever anyone talks about taxes taking more from them and easing the burden on people like the rest of us. They pose it like we're stealing from them or something when they make 200 million a year running a company into the ground that pays its actual workers $20,000 in the US and maybe $30,000 in Canada. And those statements are being made after three decades of the gap between rich and poor getting wider and wider and wider, and the records show that the top 1% have had nine tax cuts, and the bottom 99% haven't had any, or in the case of Canada, one, which really wasn't one, because the federal transfers to the provinces and the province's to the cities were cut, which means our property taxes keep having to go up like crazy to maintain local services like snow removal and street paving--not to mention interchange construction. (Remember, the federal and provincial governments make more tax every year even if the percentage doesn't change because there are both more workers and generally they are making more money, whereas cities don't have theirs go up unless they actually raise the percentage number. That's an enormous difference.)
This word "socialism" needs to be put to the Neil Postman test of word-meaning. Why wasn't it "socialism" when they took money from us 25-200k per year people and flowed it up to the 500k-billionaire crowd?
If people don't think the pen (read: word) is mighter than the sword, then I don't know a better example than this one. It just stuns me. Calling helping out a guy and his wife who work their assess off "socialism." Billionaires and the +$500,000 per year crowd complaining about our taxes being cut or, more often, our services-in-lieu-of-cuts, being increased all while they're buying bigger and bigger yachts.
Try loading $500,000 into this: www.globalrichlist.com/ If the richest literal 1% can't afford to pay even just a little bit more, then I just don't get who should pick up the slack. Surely when you have more money than you can spend in 10 lifetimes, you're okay and can lend a hand to some single mom widow or a family with a special needs kid. Maybe it's just me. I'd honestly feel lucky to be able to pay more. My wealthy brother thinks it's a travesty that he can pay so little when his teacher daughters pay much more percentage wise. Due to loopholes and business-owner breaks, he can get his down to under 10% and he's had years where it was almost nothing if he bought enough toys through work, and yet his daughters are at 35% and they have to pay extra school fees for kids because there isn't enough money in the system. I'm proud that he chooses to help a lot of charities to make up the difference. Most of his rich buddies don't.
Hey, check out Carl Ichahn's "old" boat that he's selling. Man, I don't blame him. Who wants a bathtub that's only made of gold when there's guys out there with ones made out of moon rock. ;-) www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/carl-icahn-selling-yacht_n_136231.html
Pardon my rant. It probably has as much to do with being on hold so long. ;D
peace. bubs
I'm on hold with the phone company and I'm cruising the web while I wait...
Am I going crazy? I really thought that you guys--and me--were the ones who constituted 99% of our "countries."
As a writer, I'm very aware when people start using words carelessly, like their meanings are interchangeable. It's a strange thing that there's always this chirping by billionaires about "socialism," whenever anyone talks about taxes taking more from them and easing the burden on people like the rest of us. They pose it like we're stealing from them or something when they make 200 million a year running a company into the ground that pays its actual workers $20,000 in the US and maybe $30,000 in Canada. And those statements are being made after three decades of the gap between rich and poor getting wider and wider and wider, and the records show that the top 1% have had nine tax cuts, and the bottom 99% haven't had any, or in the case of Canada, one, which really wasn't one, because the federal transfers to the provinces and the province's to the cities were cut, which means our property taxes keep having to go up like crazy to maintain local services like snow removal and street paving--not to mention interchange construction. (Remember, the federal and provincial governments make more tax every year even if the percentage doesn't change because there are both more workers and generally they are making more money, whereas cities don't have theirs go up unless they actually raise the percentage number. That's an enormous difference.)
This word "socialism" needs to be put to the Neil Postman test of word-meaning. Why wasn't it "socialism" when they took money from us 25-200k per year people and flowed it up to the 500k-billionaire crowd?
If people don't think the pen (read: word) is mighter than the sword, then I don't know a better example than this one. It just stuns me. Calling helping out a guy and his wife who work their assess off "socialism." Billionaires and the +$500,000 per year crowd complaining about our taxes being cut or, more often, our services-in-lieu-of-cuts, being increased all while they're buying bigger and bigger yachts.
Try loading $500,000 into this: www.globalrichlist.com/ If the richest literal 1% can't afford to pay even just a little bit more, then I just don't get who should pick up the slack. Surely when you have more money than you can spend in 10 lifetimes, you're okay and can lend a hand to some single mom widow or a family with a special needs kid. Maybe it's just me. I'd honestly feel lucky to be able to pay more. My wealthy brother thinks it's a travesty that he can pay so little when his teacher daughters pay much more percentage wise. Due to loopholes and business-owner breaks, he can get his down to under 10% and he's had years where it was almost nothing if he bought enough toys through work, and yet his daughters are at 35% and they have to pay extra school fees for kids because there isn't enough money in the system. I'm proud that he chooses to help a lot of charities to make up the difference. Most of his rich buddies don't.
Hey, check out Carl Ichahn's "old" boat that he's selling. Man, I don't blame him. Who wants a bathtub that's only made of gold when there's guys out there with ones made out of moon rock. ;-) www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/carl-icahn-selling-yacht_n_136231.html
Pardon my rant. It probably has as much to do with being on hold so long. ;D
peace. bubs