Behind the Wall Street Protest

Okay, let's even out the distribution of wealth. First, let's put the estate tax back in. We have to index it to inflation or it will fall apart again like the last one did. But that's a pretty easy fix with political will behind it.

Next I'd tax dividends and long-term capital gains without regard to how high (or low) the income tax payer's income is. It's a little-understood thing that WEALTH and INCOME are different. You have a high income when you withdraw your entire retirement to buy into an assisted living center. But if you're WEALTHY you just WITHDRAW it from your savings account and pay no tax at all. Wealthy people typically make incomes of under $100K because they are wealthy and DON'T NEED TO WORK.

The next thing I'd do is take health insurance and payroll taxes out of payrolls and put them into general obligations and tax them in the graduated tax rates.

Changing the top income tax rate is small change compared to any of these other changes. I think it's odd that it's even being discussed, a "millionaire's tax". It's a joke. There are only 500 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in the United States. All I an assume is that it's supposed to placate the masses.

Remember, the wealthy do not pay INCOME taxes because they do not have INCOME because they are WEALTHY and don't have to WORK!

----------

2. Break up megacorporations? Here's a bit of a problem. I think what you're aiming at is to stop them from having undo influence in government, right? That's the point? Because mega-corporations are actually pretty good for a lot of reasons. I'm not going to get into why they're good until I figure out why you think they need to be broken up. It sounds to me like you're naming the solution and the unintended consequences aren't being considered. What is this supposed to SOLVE? Because every time I hear "break up the corporations and give us good jobs" I get a head-ache.
-----------

3. Staff up the human services? That's a nice alternative jobs program to "send soldiers to Afghanistan." It's fine with me. I assume this is paid for with Federal money, right? We already have several versions of this, including Americorps and VISTA. We also have a range of job training programs. None of these pay over minimum wage, though, so they don't really get "middle class" jobs back. But they certainly help put people on a rung out of poverty.

4. Barter? Uh... no. Really, no. I have a small business with a bunch of self-employed clients. I frequently use my own client's services. But here's what happens: I have three pieces of art from one of my clients. He's a wonderful artist. But I don't need any more art, thanks. The other issue that comes up is that we make different rates of pay based on our various skillsets and capital overhead. For example, I tried to barter for cleaning services once. I did an hour of work and she had to do 8 hours of cleaning. It was really icky. But the fact is, I make 8x what a cleaning lady makes. I have more clients than I need - way more - and I'm not interested in working for a lower rate of pay.

There is one client with whom barter works very well: a farmer. We run a tab: he delivers meat, I credit his bill. I do accounting, I debit his bill. Once a year or so I write him a check for the difference because I buy more meat than he does accounting services. That works pretty well, mostly because I would have bought meat whether or not he used my services.

Same issue with the roofer: we work it out in trade and settle up at the end of the year. That's okay.

But the vast majority of my income goes to pay for things like taxes and insurance and software licenses and heat and electric bills and mortgage payment and real estate taxes. The amount of my income that is spent on things that could be bartered is a tiny fraction.

My favorite thing to say about lack is, "We could feed the planet right now. The primary cause of famine is poor distribution of resources."

I read an interesting article about that: apparently they figured out at the U.N. a long time ago that the way to cure famine was to give the starving people cash. The food exists, but the people who have it aren't willing to pay to transport to a place where they know it will be seized and then THEY will starve. But they are willing to SELL it. So if the starving people have money and demand for food the market will send them food.

Sending food doesn't work that well because it gets stolen before it is distributed. Sending money works better. The people who are starving are pretty reliable about spending these dollars on the food the market provides.

Nearly all famines now are political in nature.