Re: shuttle disaster
Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> writes:
> On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 09:22, DvB wrote:
> > Nathan E Norman <nnorman@incanus.net> writes:
> >
> > > On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 11:34:51PM -0600, DvB wrote:
> > > > "James Buchanan" <jamesbuch@iprimus.com.au> writes:
> > > >
> > > > > Famine victims OK, but nobody has mentioned the people living in
> > > > > poverty in America. Boost welfare, more education funding, subsidise
> > > > > pay rises for the lowest paid workers... ooops, America's budget all
> > > > > gone ;-)
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > <sarcasm>
> > > > Of course! If we spent that much, people with enough money to have
> > > > significant amounts of it in taxable stock accounts wouldn't be able to
> > > > keep it all!
> > > > </sarcasm>
> > >
> > > Yeah, after all it's not their money .. they just worked hard to earn
> > > it.
> > >
> >
> > You don't "work hard" for stock dividends. You just put your money in
> > stocks and they come all by themselves... although I guess I did word
> > that a little strangely.
>
> Well, you worked hard to get the money to purchase the stocks in
> the 1st place...
A construction worker (or a fireman, police officer or school teacher,
for that matter) works pretty hard for the money he/she gets, but still
can't afford to buy stocks, at least not enough for a dividend tax cut
that'll sink the country in debt to be worth a flying fart to
them[1]. He/she will also most likely have 100% of his/her income taxed.
I'm not arguing whether or not it's fair for these people to make less
than anyboyd else. Income is usually very closely tied to one's level of
education and/or skills (school teachers are usually an exception to
this rule). However, following the logic of "if some people have their
taxes reduced, everybody should" then, also, it should follow that "if
some people have 100% of their income taxed, everybody should."
Based on the above, I'm sure somebody will bring up Dubya's lame excuse
that dividends are taxed twice. To that I say that employee salaries,
AFAIK, also come from corporate income that's already been taxed
(unless, of course, that particular corporation is based in Bermuda, in
which case the dividends probably weren't taxed either), so it should
also follow that none of my salary should be taxed, since that would be
taxing it twice.
Finally, in case you're wondering, I used to have money in a taxable
stock account until, for personal reasons, I transferred it. I plan to
have a taxable stock account again in the future.
[1] According to the Washington Post article I posted earlier, a 50%
reduction on dividend taxes would cost about twice as much as the
proposed income tax cuts. Bush, of course, has since announced that he
intends to push for a 100% cut on dividend taxes which, I assume, would
double that figure.
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