What to do about Jeff?

[kellyb]

The tax burden should absolutely have a similar impact to all people,

To do that you would have to take probably everything above 50,000 -100,000 in taxes. Some feel that is the proper answer, not me.

No, you wouldn't.

To quote a great thinker:

I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind...Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.

 

[kellyb]

I know many people with families surviving moderately well on 60,000 a year even where I live in Long Island with a home.

It might depend on your definition of "moderately well". Do they all have health insurance, retirement savings, can pay their student loans, have money saved for an emergency, can afford to be unemployed for a time because of illness, etc and so on?

 

[eeyore1954]

No, you wouldn't.

Then "The tax burden should absolutely have a similar impact to all people," would not happen.

 

[kellyb]

Then "The tax burden should absolutely have a similar impact to all people," would not happen.

People below a certain point wouldn't have a tax burden to be perceived, and around the point it started kicking in, the mentioned "geometric progression" would be incremental enough to where no one group would be significantly impacted over another in any meaningful way.

 

[caveman1917]

Your strawman is pretty absurd. I don't dream of "doing business" with the bourgeoisie, but I do it all the time (also with Jeff Bezos) and so do you (but maybe not with Jeff). The bourgeoisie owns most of the stuff that we need to live, which is why everybody is forced to do business with it. Unless you stole the laptop that you're using to write your posts, you did business with the bourgeoisie! Unless you grow your own food, you do business with the bourgeoisie ...

So your concerns about being appealing to the bourgeoisie aren't based on the pragmatic grounds of being able to do business with them. After all, I am able to buy a laptop and buy food and stuff, so me considering "The last capitalist we behead will be the one who sold us the guillotine" to be a good position doesn't stop me from buying all that. So then why is it that you're so concerned about being appealing to the bourgeoisie?

You and your sig line revel in devastation, destruction and annihilation. Karl Marx didn't. It's as simple as that.

Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Parsons and "the other anarchists" appear to be anti-communist idiots.

We're talking here of Parsons of Haymarket Affair fame (her husband was one of the ones executed for it). You might not have noticed, but there's this thing called International Labour Day where every year, all over the world, the labour movement takes a day of struggle in remembrance of the event.

But to you of course they're all just "anti-communist idiots" for the sole crime of not caring about being appealing to the bourgeoisie. You have much, much more in common with anti-communists than they do.

Anti-communists refuse to give up the idea that the fake Lenin quotation wasn't actually written by Marx: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=12396127#post12396127

Yeah because dubalb is someone to be taken seriously on the subject

 

[deadrose]

There are a lot more taxes in daily life than income tax. That is why Washington state is considered to have one of the most regressive tax burdens in the country, in spite of (or because of) not having a state income tax.

We're heavily taxed in every other way. The sales tax here in Seattle is 10.1% and that's on everything but (non-prepared)food. Other states and provinces have tax holidays for back-to-school shopping and things like that. Not here.

Our property taxes are high, which are passed along to renters. We have some of the highest "sin" taxes out there (alcohol, tobacco, etc). Pretty much every tax is high to make up for the lack of income tax, but people won't accept an income tax because 1) they don't trust the government to lower the other taxes) and 2) People like Bezos and Gates are against it (and they might be rich someday and not want an income tax either).

So who do you think is affected more by those sales taxes, gas taxes, business taxes, and so on? The person who thinks nothing of paying up to $10 toll to drive in the (formerly HOV) toll lanes, or the person who's trying to scrape up enough money to buy school clothes and supplies for a growing kid?

Income tax doesn't tell the whole story, but it is one of the reasons we have some of the richest people in the world living here.

 

[dann]

So your concerns about being appealing to the bourgeoisie aren't based on the pragmatic grounds of being able to do business with them. After all, I am able to buy a laptop and buy food and stuff, so me considering "The last capitalist we behead will be the one who sold us the guillotine" to be a good position doesn't stop me from buying all that. So then why is it that you're so concerned about being appealing to the bourgeoisie?

I don't have any "concerns about being appealing to the bourgeoisie". You are just as creative making up strawman arguments as the anti-communists are making and distributing fake Marx and Lenin quotations. You find the anti-communist fake quotations "to be a good position."
Good to know.

Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

I have no idea who "these gentlemen" are. It no longer comes as a surprise to me that you revel not only in devastation, destruction and annihilation but also in authoritarian terror.

We're talking here of Parsons of Haymarket Affair fame (her husband was one of the ones executed for it). You might not have noticed, but there's this thing called International Labour Day where every year, all over the world, the labour movement takes a day of struggle in remembrance of the event.

So after making the obvious blunder with the alleged Marx quotation, you want to demonstrate that you've read about what you consider to be the glorious past of the labour movement.

But to you of course they're all just "anti-communist idiots" for the sole crime of not caring about being appealing to the bourgeoisie. You have much, much more in common with anti-communists than they do.

I never mention "all". I said that Parsons "and the other anarchists" appear to have been anti-commuist idiots if they actually "owned" the anti-communist quotation by recuperating it.

Yeah because dubalb is someone to be taken seriously on the subject

I don't take him "seriously on the subject." I notice that he insists that the fake Lenin/Marx quotation isn't fake even after it has been revealed as fake. But I guess the two of you have that thing in common: He insists that it was written by Marx, and even after you've been told that Marx didn't write it, you embrace it as Marxist and insist that he might have written something as stupid as that even though he didn't.
In the future, dudalb can just refer to you as a reference when he wants to claim that this is what ... well, not Marxists, but some, a minority, I guess, anarchists think.

 

[dann]

We're heavily taxed in every other way. The sales tax here in Seattle is 10.1% and that's on everything but (non-prepared)food. Other states and provinces have tax holidays for back-to-school shopping and things like that. Not here.

Our property taxes are high, which are passed along to renters. We have some of the highest "sin" taxes out there (alcohol, tobacco, etc).

Beware of Trish Regan! The next headline will be Venezuela = Seattle!
(Well, I guess as long as Bezos and Gates are exempt, it doesn't really bother her ...)

 

[caveman1917]

I don't have any "concerns about being appealing to the bourgeoisie". You are just as creative making up strawman arguments as the anti-communists are making and distributing fake Marx and Lenin quotations. You find the anti-communist fake quotations "to be a good position."
Good to know.

Then what is your problem with it, exactly?

I have no idea who "these gentlemen" are. It no longer comes as a surprise to me that you revel not only in devastation, destruction and annihilation but also in authoritarian terror.

And we shall not make excuses for the terror. But maybe you should just google that paragraph (as well as the first sentence of this paragraph)

So after making the obvious blunder with the alleged Marx quotation, you want to demonstrate that you've read about what you consider to be the glorious past of the labour movement.

Interesting that you consider the labour movement as only something which can be read about, I suppose it shows your distance from actual class struggle even more than your proclamations of Parsons et al being "anti-communist idiots."

 

[Mycroft]

Then what is your problem with it, exactly?

From what Dann has said in the recent past, his problems are that it's not correct and is anti-communist propaganda that portrays communism in a bad way.

Interesting that you consider the labour movement as only something which can be read about...

Nowhere does he say that, nor can it be inferred from anything he said.