Somebody with an acid pen and a facility with statistics please go crazy fisking that thing. I’m tired.
Here’s a short version, though…
- It’s no “secret,” because literally no one without an internal head injury has ever blamed Social Security and Medicare for the National Debt.
- The top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all income taxes. Whether that’s “fair” is entirely a matter of values, opinion, and priorities. The lower half of the population in income barely pays any taxes at all, yet they derive the benefit of government services anyway. Why is that “fair”?
- You can’t bring down inflation by increasing the costs of goods and services by taxing the companies that produce them.
- “End of story” is what people say when they don’t have the facts, wit or ammunition to win an argument, so they declare the debate over before it starts. Similar sign-offs: “Period, the end!” “So there!” and “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts!”
ADDED: No sooner had I posted the above than an equally moronic (and spectacularly dishonest)meme was posted by a lawyer friend. The same question applies:
(Calvin should sue.)
ADDED: This one, posted by a very good friend who should be ashamed of himself, was “liked” or “loved” by almost 20 people so far. First reply: “It’s true.”
I had to physically wrestle my fingers to the floor to stop them from typing, “You all are despicable morons. Every one of you.”
Ethics Alarms 
I think the easiest, quickest response is: debt comes from spending more than you have to spend. It doesn’t matter how much or how little billionaires are being taxed if you spend more than you have to spend. If the government collected $0 from taxes, borrowed nothing, and only printed enough money to replace outgoing currency, then the government could still avoid debt by spending nothing.
This sentiment must come from people who believe they’re eyeballs deep in debt because their employers don’t pay them enough, not because they refused to live within their means.
This sentiment comes from Marxists….
TRUE!!!
In a sermon from many years ago regarding stewardship, a pastor once said, “When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.” I have never forgotten that, and I’m not sure it can be stated any more succinctly than that.
The US government’s outgo now exceeds its income every year – by some number with twelve zeroes after it. It’s disgusting.
…and we now know the excessive outgo is all fraud and embezzlement. With that in mind, we have a lot of people arguing for the excessive outgo.
Now it was pointed out that most conservatives understand how liberals think and what they want while liberals are mostly clueless about what conservatives want and how they think. This may sound like condescending bragging, but it makes sense. All conservatives hear from the liberal media, from the mouths of liberals themselves, what they want and why. However, liberals rarely listen to any conservative media. Their only knowledge of conservatives, how they think, and what they want, comes from the same liberal media. The only thing they know of conservatives is when Jeffrey Toobin says “…and Trump would shoot all the gays and blacks and hispanics while raping the corpses of the women” while he masturbates during a liberal media ‘War Game’.
Now what do you do with 30% of the voting population that is so indoctrinated that they will insist that military officers should be allowed to steal food money from the enlisted and then tell the enlisted to ‘apply for food stamps’ then the enlisted complain? This is Marie Antoinette-level stuff.
Now what do you do with 30% of the voting population that is so indoctrinated that they will insist that military officers should be allowed to steal food money from the enlisted and then tell the enlisted to ‘apply for food stamps’ then the enlisted complain?
Which one of them argued that?
I never heard nor read this claim before.
Well, that is the sort of thing that is being investigated. There is widespread dissatisfaction on the left with what Musk and Trump are doing, which is rooting out and exposing the looting of taxpayer money that federal employees are doing. The example above is a problem which has been known and publicized since at least 2019, and has been ignored. I seem to remember a big uproar last week when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was let go by Trump. The Chairman of the Joint Chief’s has been told to investigate this theft since 2019 and refused to do so? For at least 5 years this has been going on and nothing has been done about it. When someone starts the ball rolling to do something about it…howls of dismay. Now that may not be the only reason he was fired, but I am guessing that is a representative example of why he was fired. He has known about this for 2 years and he has known that this last year $150 million of the $225 million to feed the soldiers was stolen. I don’t hear the media complaining about it. I do hear them complain when the person responsible is fired. This 30% of the population almost always takes the opinion they are told to take by the mainstream media.
There is ample evidence that this 30% of dedicated Democrats object to every single example of exposing fraud and waste. They listen to and follow the opinions they are told in the mainstream media. Find that the Treasury has been paying any invoice submitted, even if it is a terrorist organization? This 30% will complain that Musk is a ‘private citizen’ and his agency (which has had access to all the systems for over a decade) is a ‘security risk’ and a ‘threat to democracy’. Find that USAID has been funding the BBC and funding Reuters for ‘Active Social Engineering and large Scale Social Deception’? This group complains out loud about it. Find out that there are more Social Security accounts that people in the country? They claim that Musk is stealing people’s Social Security checks. Find that almost $3 trillion has been sent from Medicare and Medicaid to foreigners, just because they asked for it? Claim Trump and Musk are cancelling US citizens Medicare and Medicaid payments. There isn’t a single thing that Trump can do that this group won’t complain about and oppose. The mentality of the Trump deranged is fairly consistent. Just look at the votes on Trump’s executive picks. This is uniform party disapproval. Bernie Sanders even voted against Tulsi Gabbard, almost the only person in the Democratic Party to stand up for him. So, don’t tell me they don’t support that. They support every single bit of fraud in this paragraph because they hate Donald Trump and he is against it.
It is so bad, that I am starting to see people seriously advocate for Trump to ban all kinds of firearms. The thinking is, that if Trump does it, all kinds of lawyers and judges will block the orders and suddenly support gun rights.
So, don’t tell me they don’t support it. They support every bit of fraud and waste in the US government because Trump is against it. It is like the old joke: “You make a Republican mad by lying to him, you make a Democrat mad by telling him the truth”. Trump and Musk told the Democrats the truth about the fraud and waste and the Democrats are mad at Trump and Musk and trying to stop them. Trump and Musk told Republicans about the fraud and waste and the Republicans are mad at the bureaucracy and officials living off fraud and they want the fraud and waste stopped.
That is like saying that people that support abortion don’t support killing unborn children simply because they are inconvenient. You might demand that I prove that the people that support abortion also support it for any reason, because you think it is more nuanced than that. Well, the people you are talking about might state that they don’t support killing unborn children for any reason, but when it comes to voting on issue, they do in fact vote for it.
You might think that 30% of this population doesn’t support stealing the food money of the enlisted military personnel, but when it comes time to vote on it, they do.
I would argue that part of the problem is that conservatives might understand how liberals think, but don’t understand what liberals want, because part of the problem with how liberals think is that they don’t have a coherent, self-aware picture of what they want. Taking what they ask for at face value is not going to provide a useful picture of their values. Liberals run into the same problem when they deal with conservatives who are biased or outright prejudiced.
A person can want an entire group of people to just go away, but the reason they want that is because they’re afraid and angry, and for one reason or another they associate that fear and anger with those people. What they want is to not have a reason to be afraid and angry. They just don’t know any other options for making that happen, so what they ask for is for the group of people they are afraid of and angry at to go away.
Any decent parent knows how to listen for what their child wants underneath what they’re yelling about. If just those people started pointing that skill at other adults, that would already make political arguments into productive discussions.
EC, lefties, particularly Baby Boomer lefties (Surprise!) want whatever it is they happen to want at any given time, And many of the things they want are identified by the AUC, the Blob, the Borg, the DNC, or whatever you want to call it. They are intemperate babies, but they think the way they are told to think and desire the things they are told to desire. Remarkable.
The basic concept I’m attempting to convey is that what a human asks for is not the same thing as what will satisfy them, even if they themselves don’t realize it. Does that make sense?
You’re giving them too much credit, EC. You are operating under the assumption they are rational human beings. They are not. They’ve lost their minds. Here’s an example:
‘The fact that I am rooting for Canada and that I am rooting for Mexico a lot is really wild. But, they are really the ones speaking truth to power right now,’ said Democratic US Congresswoman Crockett last week, as she openly cheered for American failure in the face of negotiations with other countries.
Are those the words of a rational human being? No, they are not. “Sound and fury,” meet Idiot.
You are operating under the assumption that “rational human being” is both a Boolean value and consistent across all contexts and times. People can become more or less rational over time and in different situations.
What seems irrational to me is when people don’t try to figure out how to get people to find their minds again. It’s easy to get started if you understand the principles of social skills, and a solid grasp of epistemology will enhance the effect.
Human Nature 101: People don’t seek what they need, they seek what they want.
PWS
You could literally take every single penny of assets America’s billionaires own – 100% income and 100% wealth tax and it will pay for something like a few months of our government’s operations. As you said- the problem is how much our government spends, not how much our people surrender.
No, people demanding the fleecing of the wealthy are, at their most basic, operating from envy or a disdain at their own lack of achievement.
and resort to the easy Marxist Class struggle argument, such as “Billionaires shouldn’t exist”. When Marx was alive, it was probably “Millionaires shouldn’t exist”. In the Soviet Union, in practice, it was, “No one should have more than you do (except high-ranking party members and famous people)”.
To hear these people tell it, all billionairtes are the result of a fusion dance between Bernie Madoff and Lance Armstrong.
Have you noticed how much these people sound like incels?
This is just more of the same “In this house we believe…” garbage. Nonsequiturs, lies, dissimulation, fabrication, shiny-object dim-witted nonsense couched as an argument.
They are ridiculous on their face, but worse, many people shamefully accept them uncritically as valid or cogent.
I was told the Internet was going to amplify and broaden human knowledge. Alas, Al Gore’s invention is not working out like I’d hoped.
Re: bottom image
What the hell is the obsession with Putin. He is a two bit dictator who, with the exception of the Crimean Peninsula his only expansionary efforts are just talk. He has little ability to even dominate Ukraine. I could create the same image using XI with the Biden administration and it would be far more plausible. This focus on Russia takes our eyes off of China’s efforts for global domination. Instead of praising Trump for stifling China’s Belt and Road efforts in Panama or evaluating the best way to establish polar missile defenses he is accused of imperialism.
Several days ago someone wrote that the US wants Canada out of NATO because if he attacks Canada Article 5 will kick in and all of Europe will rush to Canada’s defense. This is what serves as intellectual discussion on Facebook.
I had to point out that even if true other NATO allies could not protect Canada because None of the European nations have a military comparable to ours. None of those nations have military bases in our country as we have in theirs. Russia would march through an open back door. And finally, Trump is trying to end wars and killing not start them.
I am beginning to believe that much of this crap is ginned up by forces are attempting to sow division in this country. It has to be countered with logic and ridicule.
You asked “How Do I Maintain Respect For the Dozens of Facebook Friends Who Thought This Statement Was Profound?”
The answer is you don’t. Then it becomes far easier to respond with “I cannot respect a person who believes in and repeats this tripe”. If they block you what did you lose. NADA.
I am now convince that the anti-intellectual movement begins with college faculty. They are so damn sure of themselves they cannot see this as a possibility.
What the hell is the obsession with Putin.
Indeed.
Remember when president Barack Obama said this in 2012?
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years”
So what changed?
Trump’s election. They needed a scapegoat, so the DNC and the media began this narrative of Trump being a Russian puppet.
The federal law enforcement and intelligence establishment gave the illusion of credibility to this narrative.
See more here.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2023/05/17/assorted-ethics-observations-on-the-durham-report-part-ii-the-substance/
Michael. Yep. My query was more rhetorical than seeking an actual reason
I nuked my Facebook account nearly 10 years ago and fled to Twitter. The brilliant “Iowahawk” confirmed for me that I made the right call: https://x.com/iowahawkblog/status/826812467888136198?s=19
For the national debt meme:
The top 1% became the top 1% (and have been pulling the top 1% far ahead of the other percentiles) by creating systems that siphon money out of everyone else, and give as little of it back as possible. Some retail chains pay little enough that their employees have to apply for food stamps, which means that the stores are effectively being subsidized by the government.
What’s the difference as long as people get paid? Power. Leverage. Negotiating position. Food stamps come with rules that wages don’t. It’s also harder for someone on benefits to just walk away from a job that they don’t like, meaning workers have to put up with conditions that employers wouldn’t get away with if their employees weren’t tied to the business. Think of company towns, but with extra steps that involve the government. Health insurance has similar problems that affect even more people.
Meanwhile, inflation is based on at least two things:
If companies are still competing with each other and consumers are able to shop around for the best price, companies will still be incentivized to minimize prices even if people have more money, because consumers will find cheaper alternatives if they don’t want to pay the higher prices. Whether taxes increase the price of a good or service depends partly on how much of the existing price was pure profit.
In other words, if a $5 widget costs $2 to make, and taxes increase so that it costs $3, but people are still only willing to pay $5, the company will continue to sell it at $5 and eat the hit to profits. Workers can get paid the same because their wages are part of the cost, and the process by which they negotiate the sale of their labor is separate from widget sales. (At least, it is if the workers have any meaningful negotiating power.)
I agree that “end of story” is intellectually bankrupt.
For the Calvin and Hobbes meme: I question the decision to put the words in Calvin’s mouth when Calvin is usually either asking questions ranging from incisive to misguided, raising philosophical perspectives ranging from Zen to pathologically consumerist, or espousing theories ranging from bizarre to even more bizarre.
Looking only at the words themselves, and ignoring the shift from plural to singular between the two sentences, I have no doubt that most of the people supporting “diversity, equity, inclusion” initiatives believe that the people hired as a result are at least qualified enough to do the job adequately. I suspect they figure that the counterargument about giving the job to the “best” candidate is an excuse for excluding people who can do a perfectly adequate job but who are members of a marginalized group.
In that case, the discussion we may want to have is how we define what an adequate job is, and whether the job is difficult and consequential enough that there is no “adequate”, only “as good as we can get,” e.g. emergency services.
The chain of command meme is just dumb and useless.
The second image is an example of the Left’s tendency to believe the sales brochure for whatever crypto-Marxist idea is being sold this week. I’m reminded of a scene from the excellent HBO miniseries “Chernobyl.”
Two veteran soldiers and one college-aged conscript are tasked with animal control in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Stopping for lunch in one abandoned town, one of them points out a propaganda banner left hanging after the evacuation: “Our Goal is the Happiness of All Mankind.” That’s the sales pitch: utopia. Happiness for everyone. Then there’s the reality: a college kid conscripted to shoot pets in a radioactive ghost town.
Functional adults should be above believing the sales pitch by now.
EC you wrote:
“If companies are still competing with each other and consumers are able to shop around for the best price, companies will still be incentivized to minimize prices even if people have more money, because consumers will find cheaper alternatives if they don’t want to pay the higher prices. Whether taxes increase the price of a good or service depends partly on how much of the existing price was pure profit.”
People will seek the lowest cost to them within a given range of options. More money does not mean people will seek out a Big Mac over a Wagyu beef burger at Chateau Briand on K Street in DC. Nothing is perfectly substitutable in any given circumstance.
“In other words, if a $5 widget costs $2 to make, and taxes increase so that it costs $3, but people are still only willing to pay $5, the company will continue to sell it at $5 and eat the hit to profits. Workers can get paid the same because their wages are part of the cost, and the process by which they negotiate the sale of their labor is separate from widget sales. (At least, it is if the workers have any meaningful negotiating power.)“
First I want to define the term pure profit in economic terms. Pure profit is that profit that exists above an economic profit which is defined as a revenue minus explicit costs (fixed and variable) plus the opportunity costs of capital. Thus, if I sell a widget for 5$ and it costs me $2 to make then I have an accounting or normal profit of $3 as you say. However normal profit does not include implicit costs of what I could have done with my capital. What is the capital investment here. We have no idea so we can make no determination of pure profit. We can say that if the three dollar normal profit does not meet our ROI then we will end production of that and shift to something that does.
What you described in the second paragraph is a perfectly elastic demand curve that exists only to illustrate the effects of supply and demand theory. Even a commodity like corn or wheat that have a multitude of substitutes is not perfectly elastic because all commodities are unique to some degree. Yes, you can make a cake or bread out of corn rice, or oats but the consumer not buy as much. Even if you had a perfectly elastic demand function taxes are a cost and increase the marginal cost of production which is the upward sloping part of the marginal cost function that lies above minimum average variable cost.
Diminishing returns set in at every point along that part of the marginal cost function so what happens is that taxes shift the cost functions up and leftward resulting in less output being sold, and reduced consumer surplus. When that occurs productive output is curtailed, employees are either shifted to other more profitable uses or let go and capital will be substituted for labor in the long run. If an economic profit cannot be made in the long run production will be moved to lower cost places or eliminated. Only in state run businesses would we see unproductive or less productive uses of resources in the long run which is defined as all inputs are variable.
If you examine the idea that corporations are being subsidized by paying employees less than what it takes to earn a living wage then should we not examine those industries that pay premium wages to employees who produce less substitutable goods and are not easily as substitutable as low skill Walmart workers are? Do these high skill workers who have more market power drive up costs of living because they possess a great deal of market power?
You said that inflation is based on two things the minimum cost to produce a good and the maximum they are willing to pay. This misses the mark by a mile. Inflation is a function of prices of resources and other costs to produce a good from the supply side and the ability to pay and the number of people wanting a particular good or service on the demand side. For illustration: the price of a home in Bethesda Maryland three times the cost of an equivalent home in say Washington County Maryland. The answer is that the area is populated by highly paid people with or close to regulatory power who are paid many time their worth than in the private sector outside the DC metro region. Because of the higher income possibilities caused by government spending people who become employed in industries dependent on government contracts or directly in government the costs of living are driven up. The more the government spends the higher the demand for goods and services in that area. The same holds true for New York and its commuting zone because of massive wealth created by the financial sector. Demand for goods and services drives inflation predominantly and business taxes merely shift the economic burden between buyers and sellers depending on the various elasticities of demand and supply.
My very liberal younger brother just retired last year, and because of certain strategies and distributions, his income was a bit higher than normal …. enough higher to throw him into higher brackets and extra investment taxes. He hadn’t mentioned any of this mid-year when we could have adjusted the plan, or run a tax projection. It was stunning to him, and unexpected. I very gently explained that with income in the $250,000 range, he is one of the richest 5% in the country, at least in that year. Living in high-cost California, he doesn’t feel particularly rich, but he is. He and I have had political blow-ups over the years, so I didn’t say the obvious …
Liberal America, be careful what you wish for!!! You may be one of those rich people who are benefiting from tax cuts. The Trump tax reforms helped virtually every income class, including the middle.
And BTW, in nearly every instance of tax reform and reduction, revenue to the Treasury increased. You can track the results back to the Kennedy cuts in 1962. Funny how people keeping more of their own money stimulates the economy.
There is a point of no return, and we’d need something like a Laffer Curve to find the sweet spot, but the rants about the rich and taxes are thoroughly misplaced. Depending which year, the top 10% of earners pay 70-75% of income taxes, and you can fall into that category with less than $200,000.
In this country the rich, in fact, pay their fair share.