Taxation and exemption policy

[Koga No Goshi]

What makes you think I consider myselve to be an america expert, I admire it's mindset I wish we had that optimism here in the Netherlands. You can crash just as hard here and be poor, but define poverty, poverty is not being part of these selective few to you? About these high wages, if you make a lot of money for a company didn't you earn that money, slap that equality thought on that. We just aren't equal, some rock, some don't, everything else is nothing more then a waste of time.

The fact that you disagree, constantly, with Americans, about America, about things you do not experience yourself, makes me think you consider yourself an expert. It'd be one thing to live here and have a different opinion. But if I sat here and told you that you were wrong about life or problems in the Netherlands, give me a good slap. I'd deserve it.

I do not think there is any work you and only you can do, that makes you worth $18 million in 3 weeks and someone else worth $5 per hour. I honestly don't. And I think while that kind of disparity exists, and as long as some people like that it exists, and wish it to continue, and wish to take their Las Vegas chances at one day being one of those 2 million+ in assets at age 35 type people, then be willing to pay your fair share into a system where compensation and take-home income is wildly, wildy unequal. Why should taxes be "flat equal" when pay is not? No, paying everyone the same wage for 2 hours or 2 years of work is not what I am advocating. It's a false choice when people bring up "pure socialism" when I say anything about the huge ridiculous income differences in the U.S. for celebs, athletes, CEO's, execs, heirs and inherited wealth, and then all the rest of us who work to make ends meet. Our disparity is enormous-- even the CEO's of other successful first world countries like Japan SHUDDER when they hear the amounts paid out to their counterparts in American corporations. It's an individualistic mindset gone bad; it's the idea that "oh well, who cares that if 1 person makes that much, it means 20,000 other people make dirt... *I* am going to be one of the rich ones", and most of the time it's fantasy.

There's a certain level of income you can hack off everyone's paycheck because you need it to support basic living in our society. And for a large number of people (depending on where they live) who make anywhere under six figures, usually relatively little of what they spend is on sheer frivolity. Again yes you can buy a house for 70,000 in semi-rural Wisconsin or whatever, but making say 80k doesn't exactly make you part of John McCain's club in a part of the country where "cheap housing" is 470,000 even though the company you work for pays you exactly the same wage it pays someone else performing the same job out somewhere where houses cost 120,000. (This is the reason for a lot of strikes with things like grocery store chains here in the U.S., where the workers in states with higher costs of living make, relatively, much less.)

Our disparity of wealth, incidentally, is approaching the robber baron era. A time that most Americans familiar in history would not look back upon and call an economic utopia, or a desirable state to emulate.

A lot of American problems would be greatly alleviated with a more sensible distribution structure. Not strict socialism, but not 18 million vs. 5/hour. One of the crazy, wide-eyed ideas I've heard thrown around are wage caps. No one in the company can make more than I dunno, 500x what the lowest paid employee makes. Or 1,000 times. These things are not just the "natural course of things", in America, this disparity has gotten enormous in the last few decades. Why do a lot of Americans have trouble buying a house, or qualifying for a loan to buy a house? I dunno, ask the guy who had 12 houses at age 28. Or the guy married to the beer heiress. Or the lady descended from that big hotel chain guy. They all EARNED that money, right? Take your pick.

One of my big problems with the "meritocracy" argument in the U.S. is that the same people who argue those who have money worked for it, etc. etc., implying we all start out from the same place and those who work hard get rich and those who don't get poor, have at the top of their agenda things like tax cuts for the rich, overturning the estate tax, getting rid of capital gains, etc. All things which don't help people working hard everyday to make ends meet. They help primarily and dominantly the class of people already so rich they can just play around with money, investing, or passing along obscene wealth to family members when they die. I don't understand, at all, the mentality of someone chugging along working hard at 1-2 jobs making under six figures, who then goes and espouses tax cuts for people making half a mil, or estate taxes, or what have you, unless they themselves have illusions of magically being rich one day. It doesn't help them in any other way, and in fact, hurts many their state budget, hurts the Federal deficit, and helps contribute to the underfunding of all the things we like to complain about spending money on but need, like schools, police, safety regulation enforcement or prenatal care or whatever.

[Fragony]

The fact that you disagree, constantly, with Americans, about America, about things you do not experience yourself, makes me think you consider yourself an expert. It'd be one thing to live here and have a different opinion. But if I sat here and told you that you were wrong about life or problems in the Netherlands, give me a good slap. I'd deserve it.

Some americans, it's not armchair cosmopolitism it is about having the right idea, I constantly disagree with some dutch members about the Netherlands, I am an expert of neither, but excuse me for having an opinion and excuse me for caring about what goes on at the other side of the big wet. Feel free to have an opinion on the Netherlands. You are taking a pretty universal problem and claim it to be an american one, that is pretty short-sighted if you ask me, inequality is the reality in every society that exists, and America is hardly a hell to live poverty is a very relative thing. Here in the Netherlands you are poor if you can't take 2 holidays a year, I'd say poverty doesn't exist here we are rich as hell, others say it does because some people have a bigger house but I file that under jealousy. It is not neo-feudalism it's the result of a free society that allows everyone to have a shot at being above others.

[Koga No Goshi]

Some americans, it's not armchair cosmopolitism it is about having the right idea, I constantly disagree with some dutch members about the Netherlands, I am an expert of neither, but excuse me for having an opinion and excuse me for caring about what goes on at the other side of the big wet.

It's one thing to say "I think this is the right idea, I think that is the right idea." You're more than entitled to your opinion. But when you get into the nitty gritty of controversial issues affecting the day to day lives of Americans, and acting like you know what you're talking about in more than an armchair anthropologist sense, it's not pleasant but I think it's quite fair to ask upon what basis you are making your claims or flatly denying what others say. If it's based on what you've read or heard around the net, well, we can all read headlines and have opinions, but don't go around telling Americans they're wrong about their perceptions or views of American life and the American system.

Feel free to have an opinion on the Netherlands. You are taking a pretty universal problem and claim it to be an american one, that is pretty short-sighted if you ask me, inequality is the reality in every society that exists, and America is hardly a hell to live poverty is a very relative thing. Here in the Netherlands you are poor if you can't take 2 holidays a year, I'd say poverty doesn't exist here we are rich as hell, others say it does because some people have a bigger house but I file that under jealousy. It is not neo-feudalism it's the result of a free society that allows everyone to have a shot at being above others.

Poverty IS relative. Yes, Americans aren't keeling over by the tens of thousands from malaria along the riversides. But, you do have houses and schools falling apart when 10 miles away you have vastly overfunded public schools in high property tax upper income districts. You have people never seeking medical attention because they fear the price tag, and finally, when desperate enough, clogging the overcrowded emergency rooms because many have no other alternative to get treatment. (This winds up on the taxpayer's bill anyway.) Meanwhile, other people are getting plastic surgery for their pets and their fifth nose job for that fine-tuning. The leaders and speakers in our country most in favor of war over any provocation are, almost without exception (there are a couple) from the richest strata of society, have never served in the armed forces, and make sure to keep their own kids out. (Romney, for instance, all in support of the war, but his kids? They had "other priorities.") The people who serve in the armed forces fall into two groups; the truly patriotic (from many backgrounds) who probably constitute a significantly small minority, and then the poor. The kids from inner cities and urban areas who don't have the grades to get the full rides they'd need to afford college and whose job options other than the military are a) cashier at Kentucky fried chicken b) gas station attendant.

Then you have Paris Hilton, you have inherited wealth and the attempt to eliminate estate tax, you have the multimillion dollar homes in Malibu and the Canyons where, since the threat of erosion and wildfire means insurance wont' cover them or is way too expensive, the rich people get together and slip through a bill where the state covers the cost of reimbursing them when their homes get destroyed in natural disasters. Over, and over. Compare this to Katrina, where a great deal of the people who lost everything continue to be exiles with lives crowded into the poor inner cities of the rest of the U.S., trying to start over from scratch. But, those were poor lazy blacks so they deserved it. They weren't overpaid rich whites with family lawyers and ties to state government.

We spend $10 billion per month in Iraq. We're talking about a 700 billion dollar bailout for Wall Street.

But, we can't afford better public education. We can't afford healthcare. No no, that is too expensive.

So yeah, I get my back up when people say there isn't a poverty problem in the U.S., or start making excuses for how no fix is desirable and no tax expenditure for something that would help so many struggling Americans who don't worry about how to buy their next model of ipod, they worry about how they are going to take some time off for chemo without losing both their job and their house. It isn't poverty by the standards of the third world, heck, it's not even poverty by the standards of how people live on reservations within our own borders. But it's still relative poverty of such staggeringly obscene proportions compared to the tremendous wealth in our country concentrated in so few hands, that there is nothing you can call it but immoral.

[Fragony]

Why not go to Africa and explain to a skinsack filled with bones how miserable your life is because that useless tramp Paris Hilton can drink champagne at breakfeast each and every day. You live in one of the most prosperous countries in the world with an excellent standard of living. Of course there are problems but these are luxory-problems at most.

Why so Sour-R-us

[Koga No Goshi]

Why not go to Africa and explain to a skinsack filled with bones how miserable your life is because that useless tramp Paris Hilton can drink champagne at breakfeast each and every day. You live in one of the most prosperous countries in the world with an excellent standard of living. Of course there are problems but these are luxory-problems at most.

Why so Sour-R-us

I am affiliated with a lot of social work efforts, yes Africa is a major problem but my area of expertise is Native American issues right here within our borders, where conditions are frequently very much third world. This is where you don't get it Fragony. America's not about we're corrupt and have probelms but we're good enough. America is about this can be better and progress is possible and there's always room for improvement to make a better path for the next generation. We didn't get to where we are by saying this is good enough... if we did, we'd still have black sharecroppers and segregated schools and tenement ghettoes and people losing fingers and arms in factories.