The Big C

[lowend1]

For reference, nothing more:
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

[Psycho Bass Guy]

The NTU is a conservative organization that is strongly Republican/Tea Party, no matter what their disclaimer says. Those figures are more than a little "doctored."

[dadagoboi]

Not so. The top 1% in the US holds about 90% of its wealth. The top 5% stretches it to 95%. The top 1% pays 24% of its taxes: different matter entirely.

I have to concede I heard that number the other day and could be confused.  I just googled "taxes paid by top 1 percent" and got numbers all over the place.  Ditto with "US wealth top 1 percent."  Maybe it can be agreed that the percentage of US wealth owned by the top 1 percent has vastly increased in the last 2 decades.

[Highlander]

Kenny, if I read this correctly NHS doesn't cover you for some things you had NO control over and you seem to be OK with that...

Just talk at the moment... not ok with it, just watching the UK fall apart.. we are overloaded in London with eastern Europeans and non European freeloaders who get free healthcare as part of their package whilst decisions as to their status persist, and there is nothing we can do about the EU imigrants, and as for pensions...! the next thing will be equalisation of retiirement ages and then wiping out of retirement age (keep working until we put you in the box, boy, 'cos there ain't no pention...) The UK's open-door policy is falling in on itself and will take everything else down with it...

Personally, I think it's the rest of the "Empire" getting it's own back...  

The view is obesity when not a condition and smokers who persist in failing after medical assistance... there is also a nasty thing known as the "healthcare lottery" - you will get cancer drugs in some areas, but live over the road...

But compared to most of the world... (where is that Four Yorkshiremen" sketch...?)

[Pilgrim]

I think what it boils down to is that some of the social contracts U.S. society supported a few decades ago are falling apart.  We have lost group agreements about what we want to pay for.

When I was a kid, there seemed to be agreement that education was important, and that it was OK to pay taxes to support K-12, high schools and colleges because there was "a public good" resulting from educating people.  My gig is higher ed - and since the 60's, public funding for higher ed has declined from a national average of 40% to about 14%.  There is a very good chance that many "public" universities will essentially become private and charge market-based tuition within the next two to five years.

The trend away from generalized public support and movement to "user fees" seems to become more widespread every year.  Of course, economic recessions accelerate the trend.  Parks, education and anything not mandated by law are being cut drastically.

There is definitely a hyper-conservative faction in society that simply don't want to pay anything at all at any time for any services that they don't personally use.  The Ayn Rand group would be proud of them - Darwinistic is an understatement for the approach they take.  If you are a "have", good.  If not, tough toenails.  

There is certainly a worthwhile debate to be made over which services and functions are necessary, but at present the debate seems to have been reduced to polarized parties reciting talking points but not exchanging meaningful thought.  I'm personally not happy with much of the legislation passed in the past 10 years...because it seems to me that it reflects the results of lobbying, not deliberation.

Dave, please delete this post if you think it inappropriate.

[Chaser001]

I think what it boils down to is that some of the social contracts U.S. society supported a few decades ago are falling apart.  We have lost group agreements about what we want to pay for.

When I was a kid, there seemed to be agreement that education was important, and that it was OK to pay taxes to support K-12, high schools and colleges because there was "a public good" resulting from educating people.  My gig is higher ed - and since the 60's, public funding for higher ed has declined from a national average of 40% to about 14%.  There is a very good chance that many "public" universities will essentially become private and charge market-based tuition within the next two to five years.

The trend away from generalized public support and movement to "user fees" seems to become more widespread every year.  Of course, economic recessions accelerate the trend.  Parks, education and anything not mandated by law are being cut drastically.

There is definitely a hyper-conservative faction in society that simply don't want to pay anything at all at any time for any services that they don't personally use.  The Ayn Rand group would be proud of them - Darwinistic is an understatement for the approach they take.  If you are a "have", good.  If not, tough toenails.  

There is certainly a worthwhile debate to be made over which services and functions are necessary, but at present the debate seems to have been reduced to polarized parties reciting talking points but not exchanging meaningful thought.  I'm personally not happy with much of the legislation passed in the past 10 years...because it seems to me that it reflects the results of lobbying, not deliberation.

Dave, please delete this post if you think it inappropriate.

It's a great post and I hope it isn't deleted.  However, I'm not sure I would use the term "hyper-conservative."  It seems many people who aren't necessarily conservatives believe the same way.  For instance, I have a friend who is a libertarian.  He seems to think the only thing the government should do is provide for some kind of skeleton force for national security and let everything just evaporate.  Just let it be every man for himself.   He would say, if you want a school, then build one yourself.  I just can't even remotely identify with this kind of thinking.  My point, though, is that he is about as far away from a conservative as a person can get.  Although his case may not be typical, there are plenty of people out there who want to cut as much as possible and I'm not sure what kind of label should be used for them.  This is just my personal observation, but when I look at what is going on in society it is appearing more and more amorphous. 

[Pilgrim]

Yes, labels are tricky.  I think part of the discussion going on is a reaction to a perceived "over-entitlement" in U.S. society.  I think most people support providing critical and life-saving services to their neighbors, but they perceive that we've gone far beyond that.  They may very well be right.  However, many of us (me included) tend to talk a tougher line than we really are willing to act upon...and when we actually get a chance to take action, we are more moderate than we threaten to be.  My hope is that the current economic conditions lead to a meaningful re-examination of public support and entitlements...but that's not what has happened so far.  What we seem to have is people with extreme positions yelling at each other. 

[Nocturnal]

What we seem to have is people with extreme positions yelling at each other.  

That is one of the things that bothers me about the current political/social climate here. The extreme sides of liberals and conservatives get all of the attention, when most people that I know or deal with seem to be flexible around more centered views. Anyone that steps out of the strict party lines is usually labeled as a trouble maker of some kind, at least from the "professional" political talkers. I think it's sad that we've evolved into this mess. But it's really up to us to try to fix the situation, if it can be fixed.

[uwe]

I'm worried too about the growing segmentation, even atomization of nearly all developed societies and it's not just something to blame libertarians or laissez faire conservatives for. In Germany, society's magna charta agreement is on the wane. When I went to school in the sixties and seventies, anything but visiting a public school was pretty much unthinkable, if you went to a private school you were regarded as someone not smart enough to make it in a public school. They were called "idiot schools". By now we have reached a point where people in upper middle class circles give you a wary look if you tell them that your kids visit a public school. The thought of their children being confronted with anything of what they consider out of the ordinary gives them nightmares. I never wanted my kids to grow up in a world where they believe that everybody's dad is either a banker, an attorney, a dentist or a medical doctor. And my son visits a school with a large immigrant percentage of students who sometimes give him a hard time for his overt rock star and androgynous look. Baggies don't appreciate snakeskin cowboy boots, a red leather jacket and ample mascara on a guy. But I would not want him in an artificial secluded environment where none of that happens.

Society is segregating more and more and I believe - my pet theory - it has to do with an unusually long period of stability and peace which seems to breed the development and encroachment of classes as money inevitably goes where it already is (in my book also the reason for the uneven allocation of wealth as societies mature, be it in the US, which saw the last war on its mainland territory 140 years ago, or in Europe where we've had the longest period of peace and stability ever since 1945). Lost wars or bloody revolutions are a great way to reset a society's composition, but of course neither can be a recipe to combat mounting segreagation within populations. I haven't come up with a smart idea yet what else would work though.

Other examples of the "common good fabric" falling apart are growing reluctance to allow mass vaccinations (where left-leaning liberals are more to blame than conservatives) or the mounting opposition (again not a conservative thing) against any type of large-scale infrastructure project, may it be a high speed train terminal, an additional airport landing strip, a power plant or a storage facility for nuclear waste. Everybody in Germany seems to yell "not in my backyard, put it somewhere else or better not build it at all". That is no way to develop and sustain a society and its infrastructure (I hate to say it, my American friends, I've visited your country a good many times in the last thirty years and your infrastructure has overall severely declined, the highways around a wealthy urban area such as Boston are in a state that would put many a Third World Country to shame). I wonder if a gargantuan project such as the Hoover Dam could still be tackled and finished anywhere in the US today? Certainly not in Germany and there is a point where environmental awareness/conservationism turns into a flatout witchhunt against industry and infrastructure projects. But we can't all be investment bankers and attorney - the UK is currently learning the hard way what a monoculture of financial services and turning a blind eye to the deindustrialisation of a nation (or even supporting it) can lead to. 

Uwe

[Chaser001]

I hadn't given too much thought to it.  But it seems both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche warned that long periods of stability could lead society into this sort of thing.  Needless to say, their warnings went unheeded. 

[Pilgrim]

Perhaps Uwe is right.  It occurs to me that the more one struggles, the more one focuses on internal needs and issues.  As stability and leisure increase, people have time to focus and obsess about things which are external, and perhaps trivial.  Some of this is probably very good - but it can also lead to people making a holy war out of a water bottle dropped on the ground.  We seem to be developing an increasing set of single-issue, splinter groups with no wider vision than their chosen issue.

As it happens, my grandfather was a foreman in the Westinghouse mill in Pittsburgh that turned the commutators in the generators that were installed in Hoover Dam.  That Pittsburgh factory was the only place in the US which had the capability to turn a two-story-tall commutator accurately.  I join Uwe in wondering if such a project could be done today.  Certainly the environmental lobby would do its best to tie it up in the courts for decades.

[OldManC]

I'm not joking when I say this is the only forum I know where a topic like this can not only go the rounds, but be discussed in a rational, friendly fashion with differing views being respectfully given and considered. The mutual respect and common interest that brought us here is a musical instrument having nothing to do with this topic at all, yet this conversation is going better than if it had been between 'real life' friends with our varied backgrounds. I stopped talking about healthcare with a few friends this year because we never could discuss it. It only ever ended up being talking past each other.

I love this place.

[Freuds_Cat]

I have to agree with you George. Whilst I'm no expert on American politics or the inner workings of its bureaucracy I am interested in such things. I obviously dont have much to contribute to the conversation but I will admit that I have read the whole thread and found it very interesting.

I guess we can credit Sgt Dave for keeping us all in line  at least to a certain degree. Mostly though I think its due to people here respecting each other.

[Highlander]

I can't discuss what I believe is simmering over here as that would overstep the bounds...

I know the limits...

[dadagoboi]

I can't discuss what I believe is simmering over here as that would overstep the bounds...

I know the limits...

Spill the beans!