The rich get richer

[quote name='PsyClerk']Holy crap, I forgot the good call. Good...uh...call, on your part.[/quote]

That's what happens when you see your favorite Jim Carrey movies 39 times and counting :shock:

Anyways it is not I which is good, but you. For you sir have watched Liar Liar, so I instantly give j0o more respect. :D 8)
 
[quote name='CTLesq'][quote name='Akuma']Here's a stat for you; according to Harper's Bazzar in fiscal year 2000 Pepsi Co. paid zero dollars (yes $0) in federal taxes. The way the tax laws are written allow them to get away with such behavior and if they are doing it you know damn well that others are if for no other reason than to be able to compete. Big business is sticking it to middle and lower class Americans. Want an example? Let me pick one that is close to my heart.
In 1989 Sears, Roebuck was in the crapper. The top execs had run the company in the ground and the reasons why are debateable. So they decided to sell the biggest symbol of their prosperity, the Sears Tower. Today the Sears Tower does not belong to Sears and if I was the current owner I would change the name but the state of Illinois will not allow it because they don't want people checking into the sweet deal that Sears got on the taxpayer's backs. You see after the Sears Tower was sold Sears, Roebuck told Illinios that they were moving operations to either Texas or North Carolina and that meant Illinois would lose 6,000 jobs.
So the state cut a deal. For staying in Illnois Sears, Roebuck got a brand new central operations in Hoffman Estates (prime real estate) which cost Illinois taxpayers $280 million. This broke down as $178 million in local tax breaks, $61.1 million from the state for "site preperation", which meant that they just built the damn building for free along with the streets, sewers, and lights. And they also got $7 million in reduced sales and income tax.
As a thank you to the state four years later Sears, Roebuck fired 4,900 people in Illinois, not to mention that they fired 50,000 nation wide.
Was that legal? Absolutely! Was it right? Make up your own mind. This is not an isolated case either, there are hundreds of instances of large corporations pulling this sort of stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm no bleeding heart. I believe that you should earn what you get in life, I'm not of the mind set that more is never enough. On a practical level there must be an incentive for people to not only work but to do a good job. That's why we could never socialize health care, look at how the government runs the VA medical system. It one big black hole because there is no incentive for it to run smoothly and cleanly. But I digress.
Why should large companies get hand-outs for poor business practices? If I hand a small store, say a video game store, and I made some bad choices (I'm talking legit things like overstocking and hiring too many workers and not things like never bening at the store to manage or using capital for trips and drugs and junk) would the government bail me out? Hell no!
One more thing before this post gets any bigger. At the school I graduated from last year (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) the administration was NOT giving tenure to professors and was in fact shifting more of the teaching burden to graduate students. I don't mind having some guy that is only two years ahead of me in his schooling teaching 100 or even 200 level courses but if I'm taking a 400 or 500 level course I expect a full blown prof. to be in front of the class. You pay full price no matter who is teaching the class.

If any one wants more examples of corporate welfare let me know and I can post or point you in the right direction.

Remember, you vote with your dollars.[/quote]

Funny Pepsi Co is a holding company.

Any other myths you would like to create?[/quote]

Are you saying that holding companies can not and do not generate income or profits? Isn't "holding company" a fancy term for comglomerate or umbrella corp that manages other companies and/or brands? I'm not trying to come off as completely sarcastic, any real info would be welcome.
 
Holding companies are mere umbrellas. They don't have a true P&L they have operating divisions that operate as individual companies and a holding company is more or less a common bond between divisions.

For example with PepsiCo it owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC. Now all of those interests operate with seperate marketing, budgets, product development etc. Same is true of PepsiCo's other two best known brands, Pepsi and Frito Lay.

PepsiCo more or less has some accounting, legal and corporate functions but no true products. More or less it is like an owner with stakes in all the brands. It helps select management, boards of directors etc.

Think of it like this. if you owned 10% of GE, GM, Boeing, Coke and Microsoft you would in effect be a holding company. Would would have a say in management and seats on the boards of directors. However you would have no say in the day to day operations.

Now, it is entirely possible, and legal, for a holding company to show obscene profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars and not pay taxes. How? They're paper profits. For example if a company stock increases 200% but the stock is not sold but held, you can't tax that "profit" because it isn't realized. Simple way to explain it is you buy a stock at 50, it goes to 100, do you have 50 extra dollars? Only if you sell it. Now if the stock goes down to 70 and you sell you have a $20 profit. You get taxed on the 20, not the 50. That's why holding company profits are often illusory. Not only that but you can "flip" or "convert" profits from investments into tax free or tax deferred investments. All of which is perfectly legal.

Listen, I have 6 financial licenses. I could try and explain this all day long and still not explain it well. The books on these topics for testing study guides alone are over 1,000 pages. It's not as simple as some would like it to be. They just like the sound of "corporate giveaways" and "corporate welfare" when it's all perfectly above board.

I hope that helps.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']Holding companies are mere umbrellas. They don't have a true P&L they have operating divisions that operate as individual companies and a holding company is more or less a common bond between divisions.

For example with PepsiCo it owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC. Now all of those interests operate with seperate marketing, budgets, product development etc. Same is true of PepsiCo's other two best known brands, Pepsi and Frito Lay.

PepsiCo more or less has some accounting, legal and corporate functions but no true products. More or less it is like an owner with stakes in all the brands. It helps select management, boards of directors etc.

Think of it like this. if you owned 10% of GE, GM, Boeing, Coke and Microsoft you would in effect be a holding company. Would would have a say in management and seats on the boards of directors. However you would have no say in the day to day operations.

Now, it is entirely possible, and legal, for a holding company to show obscene profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars and not pay taxes. How? They're paper profits. For example if a company stock increases 200% but the stock is not sold but held, you can't tax that "profit" because it isn't realized. Simple way to explain it is you buy a stock at 50, it goes to 100, do you have 50 extra dollars? Only if you sell it. Now if the stock goes down to 70 and you sell you have a $20 profit. You get taxed on the 20, not the 50. That's why holding company profits are often illusory. Not only that but you can "flip" or "convert" profits from investments into tax free or tax deferred investments. All of which is perfectly legal.

Listen, I have 6 financial licenses. I could try and explain this all day long and still not explain it well. The books on these topics for testing study guides alone are over 1,000 pages. It's not as simple as some would like it to be. They just like the sound of "corporate giveaways" and "corporate welfare" when it's all perfectly above board.

I hope that helps.[/quote]

I think that you are speaking above a few here. If they believe that tax cuts hurt the poor then you are just wasting your breathe explaining. It's like trying to teach a bird to swim.
 
[quote name='JAMMR']Liar Liar was great...

Best part of the this thread so far, PsyClerk...[/quote]

That's pretty sad, eh?

I say the best part is Defender's posts. ALL HAIL MIGHTY DEFENDER!

I swear I won't edit that once CheapyD comes back.
 
[quote name='defender']THose are figures you can get from the Government. They arent made up. This isnt a debate whether Bush is a good president or not. This is economics and simple math. FACTS people.

How dumb can you be to think these numbers are "ambigous"? They are the ACTUAL shaq-fuing figures.

It must suck to start a thread and then PROVEN wrong in front of everyone. What's your next thread? "AIDS doesn't really kill people". Cmon...get off your high horse and pretend to be normal.[/quote]

I am not claiming they are false figures. But i am saying they are ambigous. Did you find out how they did the statisticis? How can they accurate measure that? What method of statistics did they use? Where they convenient measuring, random sampling, etc... Don't always believe the figures cause there's more than one way to distort it. Taxes can be counted in so many ways and some are left out. Did they included exclusions and exemptions?

Aids dont kill people... unhealty sex habits and life style kill people. Aids dont kill those that abstain from sex. Aids virus do not multiple in the air and affect everyone. Lastly, Magic Johnson is still living to this day. Furthermore, aids affect your immune system to combat other common viruses. Mostly, people die from common flu or fever... when they have aids so aids dont really kill people. Aids only hinder your immune system to fight other diseases or bacteria. Shaq Fu.

P.S. Guns dont kill people, people kill people.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']Holding companies are mere umbrellas. They don't have a true P&L they have operating divisions that operate as individual companies and a holding company is more or less a common bond between divisions.

For example with PepsiCo it owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC. Now all of those interests operate with seperate marketing, budgets, product development etc. Same is true of PepsiCo's other two best known brands, Pepsi and Frito Lay.

PepsiCo more or less has some accounting, legal and corporate functions but no true products. More or less it is like an owner with stakes in all the brands. It helps select management, boards of directors etc.

Think of it like this. if you owned 10% of GE, GM, Boeing, Coke and Microsoft you would in effect be a holding company. Would would have a say in management and seats on the boards of directors. However you would have no say in the day to day operations.

Now, it is entirely possible, and legal, for a holding company to show obscene profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars and not pay taxes. How? They're paper profits. For example if a company stock increases 200% but the stock is not sold but held, you can't tax that "profit" because it isn't realized. Simple way to explain it is you buy a stock at 50, it goes to 100, do you have 50 extra dollars? Only if you sell it. Now if the stock goes down to 70 and you sell you have a $20 profit. You get taxed on the 20, not the 50. That's why holding company profits are often illusory. Not only that but you can "flip" or "convert" profits from investments into tax free or tax deferred investments. All of which is perfectly legal.

Listen, I have 6 financial licenses. I could try and explain this all day long and still not explain it well. The books on these topics for testing study guides alone are over 1,000 pages. It's not as simple as some would like it to be. They just like the sound of "corporate giveaways" and "corporate welfare" when it's all perfectly above board.

I hope that helps.[/quote]

This is an excellent discussion on the matter. I would add the following.

A partnership or an LLC or an S-Corp does not pay tax. However, the proffits/losses of the above legal entities flwow through to the partners of those entities and tax is paid at that level.
 
Beguile they are NOT statistics. They are from the IRS themselves and represent actual tax returns. I linked them eariler in this thread but here they are again. This is no different than a restaurant owner organizing his receipts and discovering X amount of his customers bought wine, X amount of his customers bought pasts, fish, beef etc., that the average customer spent the most on Saturday's. It's not an estimate it is from past behavior.

Therefore in 2001 these numbers are dead on accurate.

Here is the link again for you. It will download an Excel file on every breakdown of tax receipts. Not estimates, receipts. They are not estimate they are the actual returns.
 
e[quote name='beguile'][quote name='defender']THose are figures you can get from the Government. They arent made up. This isnt a debate whether Bush is a good president or not. This is economics and simple math. FACTS people.

How dumb can you be to think these numbers are "ambigous"? They are the ACTUAL shaq-fuing figures.

It must suck to start a thread and then PROVEN wrong in front of everyone. What's your next thread? "AIDS doesn't really kill people". Cmon...get off your high horse and pretend to be normal.[/quote]

I am not claiming they are false figures. But i am saying they are ambigous. Did you find out how they did the statisticis? How can they accurate measure that? What method of statistics did they use? Where they convenient measuring, random sampling, etc... Don't always believe the figures cause there's more than one way to distort it. Taxes can be counted in so many ways and some are left out. Did they included exclusions and exemptions? .[/quote]

You seem to have trouble following the thread here. These are figures produced by the IRS, a federal agency that has access to the federal tax data for the entire nation. This isn't statistical data when the sample size is 100% of possible data points. This is hard numbers. They aren't selecting a thousand returns at random and seeing what the distribution across the income brackets indicate. They don't need to. They know down to the last individual how many filers were in each bracket and the amounts paid. This is a massive amount of data, which is why the most recent year with detailed figures is 2001. Additionally, many returns aren't settled until long after the normal April 15 deadline and that causes another long delay in producing final figures for a given year.

Statistical analysis is a useful tool for when you can only obtain data from a subset of thew whole. When you have access to the entire potential data set this is no longer statistical analysis, it's just number crunching. In thing case the numbers are coming from hundreds of millions of data point but the solidity of the final figures remain.
 
One of the common delusions at work here is the idea that wealth is a fixed value. That there is only so much wealth in all existence and someone can only have more by someone else having less. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The great majority of the world's wealth is the product of creativity and therefore limitless.

If you have a great idea for a simple arcade game and put it up on a website for download at $5 per customer and then after you've paid your hosting and other costs find you've got $100,000, where did all that new-found wealth come from? You didn't dig it out of the ground. You didn't grow it. You didn't hold people up at gunpoint and take it from them. Why did all those people give you money and make you wealthy? Because you created something new and desirable.

150 years ago oil leaking out of the ground was not only worthless, it was noxious. It could ruin farmland and cause various other annoyances. Until someone had the creativity to unlock the oil's value as an energy transport system. Then it became very valuable. It was the same oil it was before when it was worthless but now it was highly valued. Because someone figured out an application that everybody wanted.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']Beguile they are NOT statistics. They are from the IRS themselves and represent actual tax returns. I linked them eariler in this thread but here they are again. This is no different than a restaurant owner organizing his receipts and discovering X amount of his customers bought wine, X amount of his customers bought pasts, fish, beef etc., that the average customer spent the most on Saturday's. It's not an estimate it is from past behavior.

Therefore in 2001 these numbers are dead on accurate.

Here is the link again for you. It will download an Excel file on every breakdown of tax receipts. Not estimates, receipts. They are not estimate they are the actual returns. [/quote]

So what's the numbers for low income tax payers or middle class tax payers. Do they have the numbers for those? Are they including all the information? What's the percentage for other income tax payers? Are they intentionally leaving it out? Sorry I dont have excel so I could not open it.
 
The link provided only covers the top 50%. I imagine they don't break it down further because by the time they hit the top 50% of income brackets, they have covered 96% of the tax revenue. At least, that's how I deciphered it.
 
That's the point PsyClerk and Beguile. The top 50% of tax payers pay 96% of all federal income tax. That means if you're earning less than $50,000 you might as well not be paying ANY income tax because you're not contributing enough to be worth while.

That's why I proposed that the first $45-50k of income be tax free. We'd be missing out on a whopping 4% of revenues from income taxes.

Politicians, especially those on the left, crying about the middle class squeeze? They're being disingenuous. They're flat out lying to you saying they should cut your taxes. Hell, you shouldn't be paying taxes because the sum total of the bottom 50% of tax payers is equal to a mere $35 billion. Call me crazy, but the goverment can do without $35 billion from the middle to lower middle classes.

Democrats have these numbers, Republicans have these numbers, this isn't rocket science. The thing is they want to screw with and manage that 4% of the income tax because that's where the "working people" vote is. They act like they're doing you a big favor when they're not. You're acting like slaves and you'be bought into their line of "fair taxation".

Let's say it costs $800 to process every tax return. Now we're talking the costs of weekly/bi-weekly payroll witholding, quarterly payments the employer makes in your name, year end W-2 processing, mailing, you filing on your own/accountant/H&R Block doing all your write offs, deductions etc, mail, IRS processing/data entry. $800 was spent to process a $100-$1,600 tax bill which isn't that out of line for lower/middle income people.

It's a waste. You might not as well paid ANY of it, it's far too inefficient so why bother. It cost the goverment/payroll services more to process your money than they got from your taxes. Meanwhile if you gave 65 million payroll workers ALL of their money back you'd have a bonanza for retail spending. Note: I'm just talking federal income tax here. Not SSI, not Medicaid/Medicare or state taxes.

Meanwhile you've bought into the notion that the government needs your money no matter what you make. You're willing to vote for politicians that say they're willing to cut your taxes because you're "working people". Don't you get it? The reality is they don't need your money, they never have. They're jerking you around for votes and you don't even realize it.
 
[quote name='beguile'][quote name='defender']THose are figures you can get from the Government. They arent made up. This isnt a debate whether Bush is a good president or not. This is economics and simple math. FACTS people.

How dumb can you be to think these numbers are "ambigous"? They are the ACTUAL shaq-fuing figures.

It must suck to start a thread and then PROVEN wrong in front of everyone. What's your next thread? "AIDS doesn't really kill people". Cmon...get off your high horse and pretend to be normal.[/quote]

I am not claiming they are false figures. But i am saying they are ambigous. Did you find out how they did the statisticis? How can they accurate measure that? What method of statistics did they use? Where they convenient measuring, random sampling, etc... Don't always believe the figures cause there's more than one way to distort it. Taxes can be counted in so many ways and some are left out. Did they included exclusions and exemptions?

Aids dont kill people... unhealty sex habits and life style kill people. Aids dont kill those that abstain from sex. Aids virus do not multiple in the air and affect everyone. Lastly, Magic Johnson is still living to this day. Furthermore, aids affect your immune system to combat other common viruses. Mostly, people die from common flu or fever... when they have aids so aids dont really kill people. Aids only hinder your immune system to fight other diseases or bacteria. Shaq Fu.[/quote]

OMG

Please pull your head out your butt and read this thread again.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']That's the point PsyClerk and Beguile. The top 50% of tax payers pay 96% of all federal income tax. That means if you're earning less than $50,000 you might as well not be paying ANY income tax because you're not contributing enough to be worth while.[/quote]
So, since the social worker pays such a tiny percentage of the country's tax revenue in comparison to Tiger Woods, he is less valuable. I'm beginning to understand. It's good to know that my value to our society is gauged by how much I pay in taxes.
 
[quote name='mcwilliams132'][quote name='javeryh']OMG. Why don't we just abolish money altogether and have everyone stand in line for bread? It will be so much better once the incentive to learn and develop new technologies and medicines is erased from society. At least I know I can sit on my ass all day and have everything I need handed to me without lifting a finger. Paradise.[/quote]

Preach it my brotha!

If the "rich" have all the money...where the hell do you think all the tax dollars come from that get dolled out to the lazy asses as hand-outs?

Hmmmmm?

The rich in this country pay over 90% of the tax burden (it's actually higher than that - but I don'thave the exact figure)...obviously a tax cut goes to those WHO PAY TAXES!!!! If you don't pay in...you don't get anything back...simple as that.

Go cry on someone elses shoulder...society does not owe anybody anything...welcome to capitolism 101...get off your ass and work and make something of yourself. If not...live in squander.[/quote]
Actually, society owes everyone everything. Show me a society of one. A society is a group of people. What about the handicapped? Does society owe them nothing? I suppose they were chosed by god to have to overcome a physical or mental deficiency. If you don't want to live in a society in which people help and support each other, you should not live in a society at all. That's what a society is. An egoist would love to sweep these kinds of injustices that people are born into under the rug, but they do exist. Sure, there are people who take advantage of social programs. There are people who can work but don't. Is the program accountable for the actions of those who abuse it? No.
 
[quote name='campbelld'][quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']That's the point PsyClerk and Beguile. The top 50% of tax payers pay 96% of all federal income tax. That means if you're earning less than $50,000 you might as well not be paying ANY income tax because you're not contributing enough to be worth while.[/quote]
So, since the social worker pays such a tiny percentage of the country's tax revenue in comparison to Tiger Woods, he is less valuable. I'm beginning to understand. It's good to know that my value to our society is gauged by how much I pay in taxes.[/quote]

If the measure is economic contributuion then that is exactly right. Get over it. Nobody uses this as their criterion of human activity. It can be very helpful for putting certain things in perspective. For instance, your activity may not directly generate high amounts of positive economic activity but if it ultimately results in a significant number of your clients making positive economic activity rather than negative there is a distinct payoff in that sense. In much the same way law enforcement operates primarily as a economic drain but its necessity in the face of the economy's collapse without dependable safety for those conducting their legal activities make it a critical expenditure.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']That's the point PsyClerk and Beguile. The top 50% of tax payers pay 96% of all federal income tax. That means if you're earning less than $50,000 you might as well not be paying ANY income tax because you're not contributing enough to be worth while.

That's why I proposed that the first $45-50k of income be tax free. We'd be missing out on a whopping 4% of revenues from income taxes.

Politicians, especially those on the left, crying about the middle class squeeze? They're being disingenuous. They're flat out lying to you saying they should cut your taxes. Hell, you shouldn't be paying taxes because the sum total of the bottom 50% of tax payers is equal to a mere $35 billion. Call me crazy, but the goverment can do without $35 billion from the middle to lower middle classes.

Democrats have these numbers, Republicans have these numbers, this isn't rocket science. The thing is they want to screw with and manage that 4% of the income tax because that's where the "working people" vote is. They act like they're doing you a big favor when they're not. You're acting like slaves and you'be bought into their line of "fair taxation".

Let's say it costs $800 to process every tax return. Now we're talking the costs of weekly/bi-weekly payroll witholding, quarterly payments the employer makes in your name, year end W-2 processing, mailing, you filing on your own/accountant/H&R Block doing all your write offs, deductions etc, mail, IRS processing/data entry. $800 was spent to process a $100-$1,600 tax bill which isn't that out of line for lower/middle income people.

It's a waste. You might not as well paid ANY of it, it's far too inefficient so why bother. It cost the goverment/payroll services more to process your money than they got from your taxes. Meanwhile if you gave 65 million payroll workers ALL of their money back you'd have a bonanza for retail spending. Note: I'm just talking federal income tax here. Not SSI, not Medicaid/Medicare or state taxes.

Meanwhile you've bought into the notion that the government needs your money no matter what you make. You're willing to vote for politicians that say they're willing to cut your taxes because you're "working people". Don't you get it? The reality is they don't need your money, they never have. They're jerking you around for votes and you don't even realize it.[/quote]
I totally agree, but for a slightly different reason. Any resource has marginal diminishing returns. Here is a hypothetical situation: One person has no money, and another has $3,000. Each gain a $100 bill. Each bill has the same value in terms of the goods or services it can procure for the owner. However, the money is much more valuable to the person who began with zero than it is to the person who began with $3,000. Why not do some research to determine at which point the additional resources lose much of their value and begin taxing at that point? I'm sick of people arguing that higher taxes for the rich destroys motivation to succeed. If capital is your only motivation, you shouldn't be in your field. Would you rather be operated on by a doctor who is motivated by capital or one whose motivation is to help people?
 
[quote name='campbelld']
I totally agree, but for a slightly different reason. Any resource has marginal diminishing returns. Here is a hypothetical situation: One person has no money, and another has $3,000. Each gain a $100 bill. Each bill has the same value in terms of the goods or services it can procure for the owner. However, the money is much more valuable to the person who began with zero than it is to the person who began with $3,000. Why not do some research to determine at which point the additional resources lose much of their value and begin taxing at that point? I'm sick of people arguing that higher taxes for the rich destroys motivation to succeed. If capital is your only motivation, you shouldn't be in your field. Would you rather be operated on by a doctor who is motivated by capital or one whose motivation is to help people?[/quote]

That is a gross oversimplification. People are not so easily divided into categories of profitminded vs. charity minded. Keep in mind, the doctor who is well compensated and can afford to make continuing investment in improving his practice which in turn leads to stilll greater compansation is helping a lot more than a purely charity minded doctor who can barely afford to feed himself, nevermind having decent equipment.
 
[quote name='mcwilliams132'][quote name='javeryh']OMG. Why don't we just abolish money altogether and have everyone stand in line for bread? It will be so much better once the incentive to learn and develop new technologies and medicines is erased from society. At least I know I can sit on my ass all day and have everything I need handed to me without lifting a finger. Paradise.[/quote]

Preach it my brotha!

If the "rich" have all the money...where the hell do you think all the tax dollars come from that get dolled out to the lazy asses as hand-outs?

Hmmmmm?

The rich in this country pay over 90% of the tax burden (it's actually higher than that - but I don'thave the exact figure)...obviously a tax cut goes to those WHO PAY TAXES!!!! If you don't pay in...you don't get anything back...simple as that.

Go cry on someone elses shoulder...society does not owe anybody anything...welcome to capitolism 101...get off your ass and work and make something of yourself. If not...live in squander.[/quote]

YOUR NUMBERS are WRONG! The middle class pay the majority of the tax bill.
 
The truth be told most corportations do not pay their taxes. They pay what they WANT to. Then they use their high priced lawyers to drag the government around wasting our tax dollars trying to figure out how to collect from these companies.
 
This is the typical capitalist priority system at work. The economy is a means not an end. Not all social good is quantified by its impact on the GDP. That's our own fucked-up misconceptions. The benefit to humanity is the end.
[quote name='epobirs'][quote name='campbelld'][quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']That's the point PsyClerk and Beguile. The top 50% of tax payers pay 96% of all federal income tax. That means if you're earning less than $50,000 you might as well not be paying ANY income tax because you're not contributing enough to be worth while.[/quote]
So, since the social worker pays such a tiny percentage of the country's tax revenue in comparison to Tiger Woods, he is less valuable. I'm beginning to understand. It's good to know that my value to our society is gauged by how much I pay in taxes.[/quote]

If the measure is economic contributuion then that is exactly right. Get over it. Nobody uses this as their criterion of human activity. It can be very helpful for putting certain things in perspective. For instance, your activity may not directly generate high amounts of positive economic activity but if it ultimately results in a significant number of your clients making positive economic activity rather than negative there is a distinct payoff in that sense. In much the same way law enforcement operates primarily as a economic drain but its necessity in the face of the economy's collapse without dependable safety for those conducting their legal activities make it a critical expenditure.[/quote]
 
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