Depends on who is being taxed, doesn't it?swingdoc wrote:I dunno. I think its because of "opportunity". And I see higher taxation as one of the major risks to limiting individual opportunity and reinforcing class separation.
In terms of the opportunity, you're right. It was a land of opportunity because the opportunity was made by redistribution. Was it a land of opportunity before WWI? No, not especially. You had industry barons and working stiffs. What changed? The start of taxation to pay for infrrastructure.
There's only so far you can argue with history.
Take the IMF. Always espouses cut and cut austerity programs for the recipients of its aid. Privatization, limiting of social programs, cuts in infrastructure spending.
Okay, well let's see. Argentina. Utter economic collapse. Bank and food riots. How did it get back on its feet? Blowing off the IMF's advice and money altogether. By becoming a bad credit risk.
Venezuela has been able to grow an economy by installing social services.
China is the largest expanding economy in the world. They've gotten to be that way by being a stateist, communist country with a command economy. I'm not holding them up as a paragon of virtue, mind you. I'm just saying that they hardly follow the capitalist prescription for generating a strong economy. And yet...
I'm just not buying it. I think the whole tax-cut/privatization mindset is a ploy (yup -- a snare) by the power-elites to gain a stranglehold over labor.
And everybody's buying it. They're all so tuned into the TV news that they actually think that any blue-suited power-broker in DC or on Wall Street has their best interest at heart.
Dude they care about one thing. That's the bottom line in the short term. And they'll do whatever is neccesary to get y'r dollars to play with.