Engineer Explains Taxes at Occupy Wall Street

[Swede]

Run time: 03:54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tnLz1oEOGI   Posted on YouTube: October 23, 2011 By YouTube Member: thetopvlog Views on YouTube: 302   Posted on DU: October 25, 2011 By DU Member: Swede Views on DU: 1604

 

[liberal N proud]

1. This guy says it like I think it

[midnight]

2. Such a concise explanation about why America is not broke... Our GDP is higher than it's ever been..

Time to make the 1% eat their peas....2 trillion dollars in liquid access being sat on by the corporations who refuse to invest in America.....

[walerosco]

3. Colleration doesn't mean causation

Some right winger could say, yes but we were still on the gold standard and we did not have SS and Medicare in 1953 and thats why we are having high unemployment and huge deficits. Economics growth is more complicated than just raising taxes on the top 1%

[daleanime]

4. Of course....

but still doesn't provide much for you to hide behind.:evilgrin:

[usrname]

5. Huh?

SS was around in the 1950s. Medicare was being enacted at around that time. But those are separate because they're extracted separately from the payroll.

High unemployment is not due to SS or medicare. Those add up to 10% of the salary (6% and 3.5%, with the former capped after income exceeds $109,000 or some such amount). High unemployment is due precisely as the man said: low taxes. When you charge a high tax, it's cheaper to spend that money on employees than to just give it away to the government. That encourages businesses to hire people. Otherwise the profits would be eaten up by taxes.

For people in the middle income bracket, the money comes in goes out almost immediately. Most of it is used for daily necessities: housing, clothing, food, transportation and utilities. Whatever is left is used for entertainment and other expenditures. Very little is left for investments. For a super rich, the necessities are quickly paid off. Then there's just so much entertaining and frivolous expenses one can do. The left is sitting idle waiting for investment opportunities or just making interest. That money can be used to pay more to the middle and lower income bracketed people. Then those people will spend more on the entertainment and frivolous expenses and the rich will still get wealthy. But in this latter way, everyone's livelihood improves.

The rich want to run a zero-sum game of I win, you lose. The 99% think we can run a positive-sum game where we all can win.

[walerosco]

6. you missed the point of my post

All I am saying is that there is more to the positive economic indicators of the 1950s than just the top income tax rate. Picking out 1 or 2 variables and then going to town with it is not a way to win a debate. It was probably a combination of a lot of factors, some internal and some external that are out of our control (like the rise of other economic super powers like China and India with their army of low wage workers).

Its the simple explanation of this very complex topic that I have a problem with.

[JDPriestly]

11. In the 50s, we did not have a lot of the expensive medical care and devices

that we have today.

The first successful intracardiac correction of a congenital heart defect using hypothermia was performed by Dr. C. Walton Lillehei and Dr. F. John Lewis at the University of Minnesota on September 2, 1952. The following year, Soviet surgeon Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Vishnevskiy conducted the first cardiac surgery under local anesthesia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_surgery

Open heart surgery is just one medical advance that happened after 1950.

Medicare was the response to the rising tide of medical technology and cures that brought longer lives to Americans. Prices rose as the medical technology became more sophisticated.

If you had to choose whether to pay for your parents' medical care as an individual or let your parents do without the medical technology to keep them alive, what would you choose?

Most kids love their parents and are quite willing to pay a small amount into the Medicare fund to help pay for their parents' medical costs.

And remember, the seniors of today paid the medical costs of their parents and grandparents.

Our government raided the Social Security trust fund to pay for war and tax cuts for the rich. That is one of the reasons that the 99% wants the 1% to pay higher taxes. The 1% got a huge tax cut at the expense of the 99%.

[liberation]

7. Yes, you conservatives are known for poor spelling skills

what does it have with anything?

[izquierdista]

8. Yes, they would say that

It would be wrong, but they would still say it.

[scentopine]

9. No it isn't. It is that simple. Strip it down, and the rich are not paying for

the infrastructure and services they use in the nation. From highways, to education, to wars for oil, for trade deals, for a congress etc etc, they are not paying their fair share.

Every bit of raw data over last 40 years proves this over and over. The rich have privatized their profits and socialized their losses.

[walerosco]

10. I agree with you

Listening to the engineer, you would come out thinking that raising taxes on the top 1% only is what we need to jump start this economy when the truth is more complicated than that. Today is different from 1950, today we deal with the tax loopholes, multiple endless wars, expensive war on drugs, emergence of multiple super power who are not rebuilting their way out of a war, economy wreaking free trade policies and citizen united amonsgt many other.

Anyway, the OP is partially right and I also agree with him