Golly, I do believe I'm being ignored. Interesting.

Did I ask the wrong questions, TSGracchus?

So you don't think the government should intervene on the side of the workers, but I'll bet you'd be all up in arms if there was a strike, or if the union decided to burn a factory, or string up an owner.
Why would the government take sides?
The government takes both sides, it enforces the property rights of the owner, without said enforcement, he wouldn't own anything. It enforces the rights of the owner, because he contributes to campaigns and pays taxes.
And it enforces the rights of the workers, because there's more of them, and they vote.

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Assumptions are dangerous things, goober. You should try to avoid them.

I would not be "all up in arms if there was a strike". People have the right to work, or not to work. They have a right to try and convince others to work, or not to work. You disagree?

I would be "all up in arms... if the union decided to burn a factory", or "if the union decided to... string up an owner." No one has the right to destroy another's property, or take their lives, without due process of law. You disagree?
You believe the government should take sides?

Whose side should the government take, the poor's side or the rich side? Whose side WILL they take?

What questions did you ask? I missed them.

Edit: NM, I see your post now. One moment.

Here's a news flash for you, Sport: Left to the government, it will only become more and more fucked up. The governmet will fix nothing. But, hey, if bitching and crying about wanting the government to "fix it" makes you feel as though you're doing something productive, have at it.

The individual is the only person who can lessen the gap. If someone is too fucking lazy to do that, I have no sympathy for them.

And there are an awful lot of people in this country I have no sympathy for...

Because all of these are things the government doesn't have a choice but to take action on. We have to have an immigration policy. We have to have a trade policy. We have to rule on whether workers have a right to form a union, and what that means. Either the government protects that right, or it doesn't; either it allows companies to fire people for trying to unionize, or it doesn't; if it doesn't, either it enforces that rule, or not.

Well, if you ask a blanket question like that, nothing at all. I mean, it's not like capitalists have NO rights. One should not be allowed to break into some fat cat's home and shoot him and his family, for example.

Get down to specifics, still nothing, but the specific framing of the question makes it a silly one. If we decide that capitalists can't deny workers overtime pay for more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week (for example), then we are also deciding workers can't do that to capitalists, either. Shame on them if they do!

It's all about power relationships and who has the whip hand, and thus who needs protecting from whom. Also, about what gives the best result for the economy.

In net effect, yes, because there will be more capital invested in the U.S., resulting upward pressure on wages, and the gains will far exceed the losses.

There's the evidence of history. This sort of capital migration has only been going on to any significant degree since 1980. The economy of the 1950s and 1960s shows what we can reasonably expect.

We'll sell more of them to our own people because their buying power will increase, and also more of them to other countries with which we should maintain free trade agreements (Canada, the EU, Japan, etc.) because the same process that will benefit our economy will also benefit theirs. Also, by making free trade with the U.S. conditional on respecting labor rights, we will give countries like China an incentive to respect those rights (where currently they have the opposite incentive), and eventually we will be able to sell to them again.

What makes you think that I believe we should "punish achievement" at all? Try asking a non-loaded question, or at least define your terms.

1) It is common knowledge to anyone who has researched the income tax that it was indeed sold to the people as a way to "soak the rich."

The reason the Income tax was even proposed was to make the Republican party look bad. Here is what one of the Sponsors of the Income tax had to say when he realized that his plan was backfiring........

When Republican Congressman Sereno E. Payne of New York, who had introduced the amendment in the House, saw that this end run was turning into a winning touchdown for the opposition, he was horrified. He went to the floor and openly denounced the bill he had sponsored. Said he:

"As to the general policy of an income tax, I am utterly opposed to it. I believe with Gladstone that it tends to make a nation of liars. I believe it is the most easily concealed of any tax that can be laid, the most difficult of enforcement, and the hardest to collect; that it is, in a word, a tax upon the income of honest men and an exemption, to a greater or lesser extent, of the income of rascals; and so I am opposed to any income tax in time of peace...I hope that if the Constitution is amended in this way the time will not come when the American people will ever want to enact an income tax except in time of war." {2}


NOW HERE IS A Congressman who INTRODUCED THE INCOME TAX BILL AND IS NOW CONDEMMING IT.WHY?

National Retail Sales Tax Alliance - History of the 16th Amendment

Here is an article from the NY Times mentioing "soaking New Yoork", from before the 16th amendment was ratified.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive...CF&oref=slogin

Reading the history of the 16th Amendment should convince most researchers that legislators and the typical common person of the period wanted to tax business net income and individual unearned income. Many people in that period wanted to tax profits from organized business activities (incorporated or unincorporated) and from certain forms of renting and selling, and gains derived from passive unearned sources such as monetary investments. Often the terms income and net income were synonymous and often the words gains, profits, and income were used concurrently to convey the same idea. The goal was to tax wealth created from capital investments and monetary gains from similar investments. The agenda of the day was very much “soak the rich.”

Said Michigan Representative George Richardson:[9]

I favor the income tax because it is asking a contribution of those citizens of the country who have accumulated great wealth and enjoy large incomes by reason of special privileges afforded by legislation.

The American Income Tax - Chapter 1 - Introducing the Camel

If you were to actually research the history of the 16th amendment, you would indeed realize it was sold to the people as a way to "soak the rich."

2) Your point is valid, but irrelevant.

3) Here you have a point. Crippled was too strong a word to use. While the income tax did not cripple our society back then, it has begun to cripple the middle class. Most families now need both parents to work just to be able to pay their bills. Even with BOTH PARENTS WORKING, few families are able to save much and for many families, there are no savings, or savings are limited to IRAs and 401 ks. The average American now works 3-4 months out of the year just to pay taxes. We are overtaxed and much of it is wasted by our government through fraud, mismanagement and waste.

4) I am having trouble finding the original source for this quote.

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, country and parish and pay then out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”


Well, it only took me 20 minutes, but I finally found a source. Now I will attempt to verify it.

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.”

“The language held in various discussions of this house is a proof that the doctrine in question was never entertained by this body. Arguments, wherever the subject would permit, have constantly been drawn from the peculiar nature of this government, as limited to certain enumerated powers, instead of extending, like other governments, to all cases not particularly excepted.”

“In short, sir, without going farther into the subject. Which I should not have here touched at all but for the reasons already mentioned, I venture to declare it as my opinion, that, were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America; and what inferences might be drawn, or what consequences ensue, from such a step, it is incumbent on us all to consider.”

James Madison on the Cod Fishery Bill debate, February 7, 1792, as quoted in
Debates, Vol. 4, p. 429, (Elliot, ed. 1836).

A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 - 1875

Well there you go, if you can find a different source, then please share it with me, as I am a stickler for sources. Thanks.

So, here are some other quotes from Madison........

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
"With respect to the two words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the “Articles of Confederation,” and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted."

n 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
— James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)


“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
— James Madison, Federal No. 45, January 26, 1788

” The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
— James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794

"It will follow, in the first place, that if the terms be taken in the broad sense they maintain the particular powers afterwards so carefully and distinctly enumerated would be without any meaning, and must go for nothing. It would be absurd to say, first, that Congress may do what they please, and then that they may do this or that particular thing; after giving Congress power to raise money, and apply it to all purposes which they may pronounce necessary to the general welfare, it would be absurd, to say the least, to super add a power to raise armies, to provide fleets, &c. In fact, the meaning of the general terms in question must either be sought in the subsequent enumeration which limits and details them, or they convert the Government from one limited, as hitherto supposed, to the enumerated powers, into a Government without any limits at all."--James Madison Jr., House of Representatives, February 1792:

What James Madison Might Well Tell Congress Today - The Federalist Blog


“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,”
— James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

Maybe so, but your quote certainly didn't establish that. And how can it be true that "The reason the Income tax was even proposed was to make the Republican party look bad," when it was introduced by a Republican in the first place? I think some clarification might be in order here.

There is a difference in meaning between these words and the words "the income tax was introduced for the purpose of soaking the rich." Was it not in fact introduced in order to levy revenue? And is not that a different purpose than "soaking the rich"?

But income tax rates are much lower now than they were back then. Total tax burden on the middle class is higher, but you seem to want to confine your attention to the income tax alone, and that specific tax burden isn't higher.

The point was that those very high marginal tax rates not only didn't cripple the economy, they didn't have a measurable negative effect; indeed, the surface impression is that they had a positive one (although I don't think we can conclude that, either).

But considering that real wages have declined for most workers over the same period, and income tax rates have gone down, don't you think it's more likely that this effect is due to a decline in real wages that did happen, instead of an increase in the income tax that didn't?

You have however established that I was wrong and that quote wasn't from the Federalist Papers after all.

However, the fact remains that the Constitution says what it does, and the words of Madison's personal interpretation are not part of it. The "general welfare" clause is part of the first paragraph of Article I, Section 8 (as well as the Preamble of course), and reads in full:

The section then goes on to list other powers of Congress: to borrow money, regulate commerce, etc. The phrase "provide for the general welfare of the United States" modifies the power "to lay and collect taxes," and so by implication to spend money. It does not empower Congress to do absolutely anything it wants, but it does empower Congress to spend money on just about anything it wants to, as virtually any expenditure of funds could be justified as providing for either the common defense or the general welfare.

It is seldom appreciated by people claiming we have departed from constitutional government, just how broadly empowering the Constitution is. There was opposition to it for a reason, and the Bill of Rights was enacted immediately as a condition for ratification for a reason, too. Many restrictions on the federal government do exist, but all the effective ones are affirmative rather than negative: that is, the document spells out specifically what the government CAN'T do. It is so vague about what it CAN, though, that in effect it can do whatever the Constitution doesn't say it can't, or nearly so.

There are, and have been, traditional interpretations that narrowed the scope of government power, but as the 1930s demonstrate, these interpretations aren't mandatory and the same words can be interpreted in other ways. The clause, also from Article I Section 8, empowering Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states," is vague enough that it COULD arguably be interpreted to let Congress impose just about any regulation on the economy that it wants to, up to and including establishing a complete state-owned, planned, socialist economy (provided owners are compensated for loss of property -- there's an affirmative restriction involved in that from the Fifth Amendment). All it took to permit previous disallowed regulation of business was an economic emergency and a compliant Supreme Court.

Are you an anarchist, then, Steve? Because if you're not, this post made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

If anarchy includes expecting people to take personal responsibility for improving their lives, and not waiting for the government to do it then, yes, I'm an anarchist.

I simply do not believe that the solution for the "wealth gap" lies within the government. You believe otherwise.

I believe that people can, if they apply themselves, get themselves out of a shitty situation. You believe otherwise.

I believe that people should reap the benefits of their hard work without the threat of government seizing it and giving it to no-good lazy slack-asses who are content with their government cheese and minimum wage part time jobs. You believe otherwise...

Well said

So wouldn't a non-profit organization receiving donations and giving them to people who are the poorest around be beneficial, moreso than a government?

You take it further than that. You seem to think that the government has no role to play at all. That has nothing to do with what we "expect people" to do. It's a completely separate issue, and the only way the government can have no role to play in the state of the economy is if you believe there shouldn't be a government.

Correct . . .

Incorrect. I believe that the wealth gap is a national problem, not an individual one. Its effect on any particular person is an individual problem, though, and yes, if one is sufficiently capable and applies oneself, one can overcome it. However, the national problem will still be there if one does.

Incorrect, and as I've pointed out ad nauseam I have never said anything remotely resembling that whatsoever.

Jeez, will you cut the crap? How does raising real wages across the country take anything from you at all?

But none necessitate preferring one side over the other.
How is it any more silly than the statement that prompted it? If you're going to propose to "[p]ut the government firmly on the side of labor in the capital/labor conflict" then shouldn't you be prepared to show why government should be "firmly on the side of labor?" Doesn't your argument imply some difference between labor and capital, a virtue of labor which deserves to be defended? I merely wish to know what that virtue is. If we're all equal before the law, I want to know what makes some of us more equal than others.
Then and now are not even remotely comparable. We had an incredibly fast population growth rate then, today it is stagnant - shrinking if you want to exclude immigration. Cut off trade with the countries which are growing and watch growth plummet. Secondly, pent up demand from the war years drove tremendous growth; tremendous growth which went a long way toward hiding the effects of rising wages. Furthermore, for all intents and purposes, we were the only manufacturing game in town in the 50s and 60s.
There is no such pent up domestic demand today, and there are a plethora of producers. Cut off international demand and you're hoping to fuel the kind of growth necessary to ameliorate rising wages with stagnant domestic demand. And none of us will be able to buy from the multitude of other producers who don't share your morality; the multitude of other producers who would no longer have to compete with us for market share, or resources. All you'll accomplish is to give other nations a decided advantage over us.

Which leads to the final point: what's going to stop every US manufacturer from simply leaving the US and moving lock, stock, and barrel to low-wage countries? They like their market share here? I've already explained how we're not the growing market. The vast majority of the planet lives outside US borders, and due to a good 50 years of capitalism, they're getting richer and wanting more and more. They don't care who they get it from, and there are lots of other nations willing to sell it to them. So what keeps a company here - where they're threatened with "excessive profit" taxes and forced to buy what they don't want to buy at a price they don't want to pay?
C'mon, let's not sugar coat this. Let's at least have an honest discussion. What is "achievement"? Surely, one definition of achievement is increasing wealth. What is "to punish"? Surely, one defnition of punishment is to take something from someone. Now, how does "progressive taxation" not fit within these definitions? Are you not arguing that if someone earns more money (achieves), that we should take a greater percentage of that wealth away from them (punish them)?

Seriously, TSGracchus, you're far too smart to prefer bullshit over the truth. Let's just call it what it is and discuss the merits of the truth. How harshly should we punish achievement?