Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - The gap between the rich and the poor: how do we reduce it?

levite · 04-23-2011, 10:47 PM

I couldn't help noticing that among your listed choices, there was no option for "all of the above."

Which is a shame, because that's essentially my answer. Elements of all the above choices should be used to aid in closing the gap between rich and poor, and helping eliminate poverty, hunger, homelessness, and insufficient education. No one thing or one isolated idea is going to cure these problems: many different things are needed, to different degrees, and in different ways.

But just to have something to vote, I put down "progressive tax system," because I think a good place to start is by lowering taxes on the poor, raising taxes on the rich, closing loopholes in corporate taxes, and eliminating the treatment of corporations as individuals with rights under the law. Far too much money is being lost by greedy corporations and some super-rich individuals hiding their money offshore, and putting it through a maze of paperwork to essentially legally launder it away from taxation. And far too much effort is being spent trying to make this country work by taxing the shit out of people making $25K, $35K, $45K and $55K a year, and even folks making $60-250K are taking it in the nads way too much.

It's just basic sense: you don't get much cheese out of a guy with two cows; you get serious cheese out of a guy with thousands of cows. Or as Willie Sutton pointed out about the banks he robbed: "That's where the money is."

04-23-2011, 10:47 PM	#4 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	I couldn't help noticing that among your listed choices, there was no option for "all of the above." Which is a shame, because that's essentially my answer. Elements of all the above choices should be used to aid in closing the gap between rich and poor, and helping eliminate poverty, hunger, homelessness, and insufficient education. No one thing or one isolated idea is going to cure these problems: many different things are needed, to different degrees, and in different ways. But just to have something to vote, I put down "progressive tax system," because I think a good place to start is by lowering taxes on the poor, raising taxes on the rich, closing loopholes in corporate taxes, and eliminating the treatment of corporations as individuals with rights under the law. Far too much money is being lost by greedy corporations and some super-rich individuals hiding their money offshore, and putting it through a maze of paperwork to essentially legally launder it away from taxation. And far too much effort is being spent trying to make this country work by taxing the shit out of people making $25K, $35K, $45K and $55K a year, and even folks making $60-250K are taking it in the nads way too much. It's just basic sense: you don't get much cheese out of a guy with two cows; you get serious cheese out of a guy with thousands of cows. Or as Willie Sutton pointed out about the banks he robbed: "That's where the money is." __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)