Will the successful stick around to be soaked?

Yeah they'll stick around.

Why?

Because at the end of the day they know that all the other developed countries they'd flee too are all more socialized in some way than the USA ever will be.

For instance, if the rich want to go to China, they gotta worry about that government just nationalizing their assets.

 

Even if they go to Britain, they'll still be forced to pay into a universal healthcare system.

 

Quite true, the founders did not create a progressive Federal individual income tax system at all, but that all changed beginning in 1913, as did most of the problems we have had to contend with since then. In Reagans last year of office, the combined spending per capita by Federal, State, and local governments was $7,092, averaging per person $4,196 by the Federal government, $1,365 by State governments, and $2,012 by local governments. In 2012 the total spending per person by Federal, State, and local governments amounted to $20,312, averaging $11,871 by the Federal government, $4,870 by State governments, and $5,296 by local governments. While government spending has increased nearly 3 times over that period of time, so has the GDP, while $3.09 in 2012 was the equivalent value of $1 in 1988.

Why shouldn't the most successful stick around? They AND the Federal government benefit most from the actions which ONLY tend to grow the number of citizens who are being made more and more dependent on one or more government assistance programs.

 

Thank -you , Individual. Lincoln levied a brief fed tax to repudiate cival war debt. Save that fact , the evil did not commence until 1913. However , you are incorrect about the brain drain. While undesireables are welcomed in this country ; this practice is not universally accepted. Belize and Suisse are very selective. Only the civilized and competant are welcomed. Many talented x-pats find themselves in these beautiful , advanced nations. Suisse has more or less told us whom is welcome by outlawing minirets and mosks. Although changes have been made ; they still remain very civilised in the arena of financial privacy.

 

Damn, tough luck 'Tide...

 

Re post 20. Good info. Proving only the successful are getting soaked. One way or another ; time to ditch obamunism.

 

I didn't say anything about a brain drain. Was that a response to something someone else claimed?

 

Actually , Individual , that was aimed at you. I somehow get the impression that you still feel the US to be the best tax free environment. Incorrect. Many successful folks are flocking to places like Belize. obamunism is the reason.

 

I don't know where or how you got that impression. Taxes are worse and much more complex in the U.S. than any other country I've lived in, and although I no longer live in the U.S. after Clinton gained a second term, but still have to pay taxes in the U.S., problems related to/created by government have progressively (no pun intended) only worsened.

Tax free for those who pay no taxes maybe?

 

With the advent of obamunism ; the ranks of tax avoiders and protesters is growing by leaps and bounds. Only the parasitic cry for more taxation. Very counterproductive. When will the parasitic become the problematic? Or worse yet predators? Hence the Flat tax revolution. You are correct, especially on the corp level ; the US has the highest taxes in the world. Anyone saying otherwise has been duped by the current despot.

 

your OP title sounds like it came right out of "atlas shrugged"

 

Isn't it funny how sometimes fiction sometimes becomes fact?

 

if you share the same world view as Ayn Rand there is no hope for you.

 

What am I supposed to be 'hoping' for?

 

I "hope" you awake.



what value dose people amassing wealth for the sake of greed or power provide. this is the way to extinction.

 

I'm quite awake, and what is it you feel that is wrong with Ayn Rands' world view?

 

probably wasting my time.......
the main false premise she starts from thinking that people who have amassed wealth deserve it because they worked hard for it.(even though they have no ideas of there own and harvest ideas from their workers and resources of the earth for there own power and greed. valuing people and their labour as almost worthless.) YOU are nothing to them and they are not part of the celebrity cult for you scrutinize.
she portrays the masses as leaching off the few . the truth is that without the labour and ideas from the people and resources from the earth they would have nothing. and just cause the family someone's born into hoarded wealth for generations dose not make their offspring deserving and when they're hoarding 100,000s of millions more times the resources than they could even need. on a global scale in the small world we live in now it will consume all leaving no space personal freedom. leaving a world of slaves to benefit the a few people who feel they own everything and everyone. if you are still thinking the government controls anything but their own stage show, you probably also believe that anyone can make it from nothing to prosperity and riches (trained goal to keep you sleeping)by their boot straps. you may even see examples of such people in the celeb cult to keep your faith strong.

 

For a start Atlas Shrugged is not exactly well written (reviews have called it "Excruciatingly awful.", “bumptious” and “overwrought”) compared to something like Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm it is clearly dire.

I suppose someone might read it as science fiction but I think they would be disappointed and if anyone out there is thinking of doing so I’d suggest giving it a miss, there is a lot better and more interesting sci-fi out there. Although China Mieville has it as one of the Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read he does so he says to “Know your enemy”.

While John Rogers has quipped that "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs"

And that is it, the book has come to be seen by many on the right as a work of political thought on which to base there political and economic ideas.

But to me even there this book fails, in the main it has an either or mentality, there are makers and takers, the creators and the looters, the produces and the moochers, the good and the bad. And I’ve noticed that many on the right take this binary mentality to heart often seeing things as black and white, or as a fight between good individualism and evil collectivism.

It the kind of mentality that can lead to an irrational extremist stance seeing only what they believe is ‘good’ and seeing everything else as ‘bad’.
The plot idea Rand had and the thought she was expressing was that if the producers went on strike and removed themselves from society then the society left to the moochers would fall apart, because it couldn’t function without the ‘producers’ input.

But the problem is that there already is a mechanism that removes such people from society is called death. Artists die art doesn’t die, business leaders die there business often carry on, inventers die but inventing doesn’t stop. One of the lessons of history is that things carry on, yes sometimes for the worse but often for the better.

The book also nurtures the simplistic idea that there can be only one set of outcomes. For example the belief that only one person could invent something and without that person it - or something very similar or something doing the same thing - would not happen. But the reality is that we all stand on the shoulder of others while there have been rare geniuses that have taken steps into the unknown, most developments are just that, things that have developed from other earlier things. Yes someone may get the copyright/patent first and get into the history books as the ‘inventor’, but that does not mean others were not also close to doing it as well (take the invention of the telephone for example). And these days there often isn’t even a single inventor many developments or new products are team efforts with the copyright/patent going to an entity (corporation, foundation, university etc).

The other myth of outcome is that people in top positions deserve to be there, for example many of the CEO’s of corporations that they drove into the ground were being lauded and been given huge bonuses before the crash reveals just how bad they were running things. I mean maybe the world would have been better if Alan Greenspan that well known supporter and friend of Ayn Rand had disappeared.

To me the problem with Atlas Shrugged been taken seriously as a political philosophy is that it is way too simplistic, naive, and divorced from reality, to me the only people that would come to believe in it are those that are rather unquestioning or are devoid of rational analysis.


edited version of original posted in the thread Atlas Shrugged, bad book, bad theory http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=465748

 

I don't know about 'your' time, but you have wasted 'my' time.

 

Ok then what do I have wrong?

good post Balbus much better than my midnight ramblings