if we talked about ballet with neo, we would not have to define everything nor expand on every point for understanding.

but when your talking and referencing history that most are not aware of, what can one do?

you are right as to the premise of taxes, and your point indicates or draws into relief the fundemental change that happened to the state once socialism came on the scene.

i will bring this up again later at a hopefully opportune point, but will say just a tiny amount here.

that if socialism is justice, and capitalism and other things outside of that are to blame for the bad, then the system will not stop till all is totally controlled.

the reason being is that in order not to do that we would have to be happy with having a partly ‘bad’ system. since we are no longer capable of that, the system eventually becomes totalitarian in ALL versions. its only a matter of time.

even bakunin said so, and said woe to the people on the bottom in the two class communist system. and did so decades before the russian revolution brining such evil pragmatnic system devoide of morals into the world.

You maximize ‘opportunity’ by allowing capital to move more freely by taxing it less. More jobs are created by entrepreneurs and companies.

Investments lead to opportunity.

Yes, that is the important point. 🙂

It is for the reason I state above that liberals/leftists have to resort to making the accusation and erroneously that reducing the capital gains tax rates reduces revenue into the government. Liberals and leftists try to appeal to people with class warfare and those who STUDY the issue see that liberals/leftists have it wrong on ALL fronts.

Opportunity would be realized with reductions in income tax rates, capital gains tax rates and estate tax rates.

As the economy expands, yes, opportunity is realized. 🙂

I appreciated your posts. I know they are long and I don’t have time to read everything, but I get most of it. My frustration with this topic stems from the fact that some people miss the forest for the trees. Arguing the Laffer Curve and government revenues, while strictly adhering to the topic as neo set it up, completely misses the most important thing: the overall prosperity of the nation and the dynamism of its economy. I am quite familiar with the Laffer curve debate, as it was all the rage back when I was an economics major at UNH (1978-82). But by the time I had matriculated into BC’s MBA program in 1987, after I had left the seminary, it quickly became apparent to me that the Laffer curve and the debate about it miss the point. Maximizing revenues to the government is not what our country is about. Maximizing opportunity and prosperity for our people IS the important point. Learning the mathematics of investing and evaluating risk, quantitatively and qualitatively, gives one the correct context for understanding the nature of the problem.

Reading your first post indicated to me that you were confused as to the topic being about “capital gains taxes” not income tax rates….

I read subsequent posts to see if your mind got clearer but got tired with it.

EVERY time for over 50 years that the capital gains tax rates are reduced the revenue flows into the government go UP. To ask for us to show you this is laziness on your part to be blunt.

Do not be confused and lump in income tax rates when the topic is capital gains tax rates.

Additionally, the reverse is true. When capital gains tax rates are increased the revenues from capital gains is reduced….

The reason for these reactions has almost NOTHING to do with the Laffer curve – no similarity to income taxes… Yes, the Laffer curve should be recognized by the left because they seem incapable of understanding that increasing income tax rates does not equal a STATIC increase in revenue into the government but again….. THE TOPIC was capital gains taxes…

To be helpful… When capital gains tax rates are reduced.. enterprises, home owners, individuals realize more of their gains and they make the determination more often that NOW is the time to sell their capital. Capital flows faster. When capital gains tax rates are high the reverse is true. More people hold onto their capital because there is no gain to selling when it will simply be eaten up by taxes.

Let’s take farm equipment or houses for example. If an investment into farm equipment or houses have increased over the years so that it is worth twice as much ($200,000 versus $100,000) when capital gains taxes are high there is very little benefit to offloading the capital. Capital is frozen. Doesn’t move. When capital gains taxes are reduced – indivuduals and entities are likely to gain from their investment more and therefore capital moves more often.

This is why in history in the U.S. every time capital gains tax rates are reduced the government sees a flurry of revenue and the economy improves. There are TWO benefits to reducing capital gains taxes that leftists seem NOT to understand:
1) government sees a short term flurry of revenue for a few years as capital starts moving
2) The movement of capital is a catalyst towards economic activity and job creation. More employment is a LONG term revenue booster because more tax payers are paying income taxes and it lessens the burden on government as less people are dependant on the government.

Wouldn’t you say mr. alex leftist that point number two is Fair? 😉 Or would you LIKE for more people to be dependant on government ?? 😉

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guides/Z-Social%20Justice-Code%20for%20Communism.htm

and below is a leftist complaining about all the codes and an example.

I’ve been loosely involved on the far-left for about four years now and I’m only getting used to the jargon and the alphabet soup of different groups.

there are literally tons of sentences, catch phrases, and slighly changed phrases that are mantras of communisms conversations with the west in speaking codes.

it actually helps build cache and such as those in the know, feel they are part of some movement, something special. and those on the out, appear stupid to them.

socialists talk in war terms… the war against poverty, the war against drugs, the war against wars, etc. / they like terms like revolution, revolutionary, marches, struggles, battles, crisis…

todays phrases are the old ones with some new ones, liberation theology, social justice, justice, reform, diversity, equality (so that we push equality of outcome rather than equality before the law)..

disciples who understand the sterile language of socialism are programmed to respond the same way using the exact same words. If one were to ask better educated core supporters three questions, they will each respond exactly the same way, using the exact same boring ideological words and phrases. That is an indication of brainwashing and indoctrination.

this is why they all sound the same and cant argue merit. they are not knowlegeable in the facts, they are knowlegeable, like confucians on the right customary response as dictated by their leaders. and so they apply that and the language.

LANGUAGE is key.

after all, what is communitarian, other than the concatenation of communist totalitarian?

language is key

Education of a Patriot
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,934288,00.html

with the study of Russian compulsory in all grades of primary and secondary schools, pupils are required to spend more time learning “the language of socialism” than any other subject except Hungarian language and literature.

they have a language, its consistent, and its used as a weapon. the article above is from 1949… and they talk of the language of socialism…

and those in the US, unless part of the issue, are usually totally ignorant of it.

which makes them vulnerable to waste their time arguing decided points because of a designed language game!!!

heck without that you cant learn the strategy of communism from above (politicians) and communism from below (grass roots), and how they seek to crush the people between both of them.

It might be more illuminating to see the dividing line between the conservatism of an old left and the radicalism of a new left as an issue between a politics from above and from below. Among the new left there continued to be a quite fluid debate about the appropriateness of continuing with the language of ‘revolution’. Parts of the ‘new left’ proved perfectly capable of stepping back across the divide and rejoining the ‘old left’ (in the shape of the Communist and social democratic parties). The new feminism or sexual permissiveness, for example, was not automatically linked to anti-authoritarianism or to ideals of self management.
In the middle way / Colin Barker

rather than have uniforms to denote who they belong with, they have language. that way they acn appear in any context and place, from bikers, to politicians, and appear so different, but talk exactly the same talk.

here is a classic code… marx spoke of alienation, everyone today uses it as if they are talking about medical alienation, but in the language of socialism, alienation is actually something else. its interesting reading leftists use the term the wrong way and use the wrong way to justify something, never having enough actual knowlege to actally be proficient in what they are talking about.

the language allows them to SOUND proficient.

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”, 1946

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
George Orwell

Horse crap. Flat out horse crap.

Median Individual income is up by 50% from 20 years ago. Even adjusted for (the fairly low) inflation, it’s still a huge increase in only 20 years.

I suggest you try to use a different orifice for talking.

but here is more to confirm some of the stuff i was saying…

like fredhjr i am conscerned with the big picture, everyone here gets caugt in local minima and cant see past the thing discussed to see how all these facets fit together.

ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302137342405551

Barack Obama’s Stealth Socialism

Election ’08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called “economic justice.” He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code – socialist code.

this is just so you all (if you bothered to read my long post), dont think i am nutty and imagine secret codes, when its well known that the socialists have talked in codes here for nigh 75 years.

“we’ll ensure that economic justice is served,” he asserted. “That’s what this election is about.” Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn’t have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.

In the past, such rhetoric was just that – rhetoric. But Obama’s positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.

that there are many terms in which the mass public is unaware since they dont read the papers where such things are discussed. they are given the terms, but not the definitions, and if the definitions are constructed from the terms, they mislead the person into thinking that they are about other things that the person generally would not be against, and not for socialism.

Obama also talks about “restoring fairness to the economy,” code for soaking the “rich” – a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.

Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He’s disguising the wealth transfers as “investments” – “to make America more competitive,” he says, or “that give us a fighting chance,” whatever that means.


While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply – as well as teach – Alinsky’s “agitation” tactics.

when you discuss the points as if this is still a meritocracy, your being led by the nose, since that discussion was actually never on the table.

obama does not want a discussion as to any validity, he just wants compliance and deniability so that appearing to make an attempt to fix something never is held against the merit of was if fixed.

this is a game of codes, and such.. not a game of real debate and we forget this.

the time for debate is in the years between elections. thats when we should find out what social justice is, what liberation theology is, and so forth…

and then steel ourselves agasinst accepting snake oil salesmen pushing those cures.

now is the time to hear the codes and the tag lines and to swarm to the side promoting what you think yuo want.

for the left thats communism. a benificial nice communism, that has never existed, for good reasons. (mainly because its a beuracratic feudal state).

i am sorry i am so long… there is so much that people here just ignore as if it doesnt exist.

that there are state intereferences, that there are spies and operatives, that russias archives have shown they have been VERY active for 75 years and funded by the societies that they take over and complicity in the state socialists giving out billions to things like acorn.

that ayers, and alinksy, and wright, and frank, adn all the others were die in the wool communist reds of the russian kind.

which then makes obama cut from teh same cloth. evne more so when one knows the code terms that they use in their own writings to let one know that the REAL thing they are promoting is X, while talking about Y, Z, and R…

sigh

my inability to be articulate enough prevents my being taken better in discyussion. it doesnt mean i am not talking about valid things.

in fact i am talking about valid things that are even scarier than the presumption of not understanding the laffer curve. but imply understanding and a purposeful intent to use the curve to create crisis.

recuse to consider that the worst people have to compete with the best and hide their ulterior motives.

If you’re interested in misery,
1- always try to look good in front of others;
2- always live in a world of assumptions and treat each assumption as though it’s a reality;
3- relate to every new situation as if it is a small crisis;
4- always live in the future or the past; and
5- occasionally stomp on yourself for being so dumb as to follow the first four rules.

W. W. Broadbent

“We were making the future, he said, and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!”
H. G. Wells

here is what the founder of the ACLU said:

“Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise…We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make of this country, and to show that we are really the folks that really stand for the spirit of our institutions.”-Baldwin

if you dont know this, how useful are your plans, ideas, and other things? does something like this change your idea of why the ACLU fights for what it does, and ignores other things?

and then to know that such ways and means were spread across the whole polity?

On January 17, 1931, the Special House (of Representatives) Committee to Investigate Communist Activities in the United States issued a report which stated the following:

“The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the communist movement in the United States, and fully 90% of its efforts are on behalf of Communists who have come into conflict with the law. It claims to stand for free speech, free press, and free assembly; but it is quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is to attempt to protect the communists in their advocacy of force and violence to overthrow the Government, replacing the American flag with a red flag and erecting a Soviet Government in place of the republican form of government guaranteed to each State by the Federal Constitution…Roger N. Baldwin, its guiding spirit, makes no attempt to hide his friendship for the communists and their principles.”

so how can we regard everything as if this darker half doesnt exist at all… i am using the aclu as an example, but there are literally hundreds more.

acorn today would be a current example even though the aclu is still doing the same things.

Obama can and would never be able to say straight out what he wants, what he proposes, or what he intends to do. he is what is referred to as a crypto communist…

and as such… speaks in the codes that make the ignorant stay that way, chasing false things, when dialoging to consensus insures that their discussions are meaningless and the outcome predetermined. This code also allows his supporters to glom onto him

thats how come all over the world everyone is piping up in support. their programming is to support those in power that use the code terms.

they stress them, they repeat them, and like neo above, if accepted as face value, you waste your time arguing merit,when its not even on the table!

“In Britain, health care policy is also about “fairness.””

I tend to call it forced equality.

There was a supply problem with oil and a huge bubble in commodities because of the very lax monetary policies pursued. Eventually, it all came to a head late in the Carter administration in a profound way.

Obama’s young supporters mostly are deficient of solid background in history and economics. These kids are the ones who will suffer the most from a stagnant economy that will ensue if they approve of penalizing risk capital. His older Boomer supporters are mainly Leftists who have government and education jobs, hence they feel secure in an environment where government takes more to redistribute it.

It will all hurt the people who most need opportunity: the ones they think they are trying to help.