The Elite: It's a Big Club and You're Not in it

OfficePants said:
what about my questions?
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You can only mess with the military so much. 900 billion in spending, do you dare cut much? So too for your other questions.

There are parts of the bureaucracy that could be sliced but really you don't want to change those things that people admire or fear about America.

Rather than cutting huge tracts from spending, set a reasonable percentage for the consumption tax but not the crazy low numbers that have been suggested.

You still have to keep the machine running but this way you are spreading the pain more widely and it is a different kind of hurt
 
JimmyRustler said:
I imagine the statist communists who want to redistribute wealth to their pet social, military, and commercial causes.
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Fuck them. I am all for reasonable and effective taxation. I just can't see 2% working. It would be nice.
 
Thruth said:
Fuck them. I am all for reasonable and effective taxation. I just can't see 2% working. It would be nice.
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It would never fly.

Secondarily, or perhaps primarily, the government spend is part of the economy, and when you take it away you'll end up mangling the economy. It would recover as basically everything got privatized/exploited, but you'd end up with a similar result with Russia and the oligarchs.

Transitioning to a consumption tax is really the only viable alternative in my mind to the current system, but it would have to be stepped into gradually.
 
Michael Graetz's proposal would eliminate income tax for 90% of filers.
 
I'm not going to pretend that I paid much attention here, but I really need to go re-read the chapter of PJ O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores where he strikes the superfluous parts of the budget, leaving about 10% uncut.
Thruth said:
You can only mess with the military so much.
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Washington was adamantly against standing armies. They have no purpose beyond encouraging war. To this day, I say national defense is fine in the hands of the armed populace. It worked in Red Dawn.
 
Russell Street said:
I'm not going to pretend that I paid much attention here, but I really need to go re-read the chapter of PJ O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores where he strikes the superfluous parts of the budget, leaving about 10% uncut.

Washington was adamantly against standing armies. They have no purpose beyond encouraging war. To this day, I say national defense is fine in the hands of the armed populace. It worked in Red Dawn.
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Fuck that. Let dummies go fight for me while I hide in the abandoned warehouse.
 
There are a few senators and members of the house who have published bits and pieces on both a flat tax or a consumption tax replacing income tax.

Adding a VAT in conjunction with income tax is not the answer. Look at Europe

We added a 10% VAT here which reduced hidden taxes and thus the cost of some items but the tax was applied to everything including food which had been exempt.

It was cut to 5% via public outrage and election pandering
 
Russell Street said:
I'm not going to pretend that I paid much attention here, but I really need to go re-read the chapter of PJ O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores where he strikes the superfluous parts of the budget, leaving about 10% uncut.

Washington was adamantly against standing armies. They have no purpose beyond encouraging war. To this day, I say national defense is fine in the hands of the armed populace. It worked in Red Dawn.
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If only for optics, I don't think that America would weather things well if they were no longer the protector of oil and favoured dictators the free world
 
doghouse said:
http://www.economist.com/news/leade...pital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly
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Despite my feeling that formal education is largely masturbatory outside a few true professions, this article is mostly correct.
However, let's be serious, college is more a symptom of being raised by affluent parents than a cause for perpetuation. There are gobs of whiny unemployed liberal arts majors that will not benefit one lick.
Of course if you or your children are relying on a degree for anything beyond access to the trust, not elite!
 
Russell Street said:
Despite my feeling that formal education is largely masturbatory outside a few true professions, this article is mostly correct.
However, let's be serious, college is more a symptom of being raised by affluent parents than a cause for perpetuation. There are gobs of whiny unemployed liberal arts majors that will not benefit one lick.
Of course if you or your children are relying on a degree for anything beyond access to the trust, not elite!
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Sorta. I think it has a lot to do with this generational idea of "do what you love" bullshit. That creates non-employable weenies.

Me? Fuck that, I took a look at the list of average starting salaries, ran my finger to the bottom where the highest $ was and said there, that's my fucking major.
 
I'm always skeptical of the claims that college grads making that much more, as I suspect that if you filter out certified professionals you'll find vo-tech graduates out-earn the college dopes. However, there is this article wondering why blacks that reach the middle class tend to have kids that sink right back down. Low value on education is cited...
http://www.theatlantic.com/business...s-kids-become-black-lower-class-adults/384613
 
Journeyman said:
Speaking of the elite, although I can't be absolutely sure, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Canadian man in this article is Thruth Thruth :

http://www.news.com.au/finance/mone...vice-draws-scorn/story-e6frfmcr-1227194539834
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doghouse said:
Yeah, leave it to an Elite™ like Thruth Thruth to call a 1 million dollar house modest.
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i know i can't make it on @25K per month in Vancouver, where $1 mil is a modest house. Wrong province for me boys. i'm in Saskatchewan where a $1 mil house makes people poop their pants in fear

.....and it is EliteExtraLite™ now
 
Ha, they're on the run.
http://www.theguardian.com/public-l...ervous-super-rich-planning-escapes-davos-2015
As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes
With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.
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JimmyRustler said:
Great, chase away the people with money. That'll work out just fine for us.
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Fuck them. They don't do us any favors. The super rich produce virtually nothing. They live off of dividend income.

And by the way homey, they are responsible for the income inequality they're planning to flee from.
 
JimmyRustler said:
You want to live in a country full of poor people? I mean, rich people may live off dividends but they're virtually the only ones who pay taxes anymore. So you're talking about now taxing the shit out of the poorz to afford foreign wars, social security, medicare, and all the rest of that shit.
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We already live in a country full of poors.
 
The United States of Inequality


Economic inequality in America has been steadily increasing for three decades. Since the recession, only the very rich have made out well. Now, we have data on the individual U.S. states where the class war is being lost most severely.

A new study from the Economic Analysis and Research Network breaks down our nation's recent economic inequality numbers on a state-by-state basis. The numbers on a national level are bad; the numbers on a state-by-state level are also bad. The situation is bad everywhere. That is the short takeaway from this report, for you busy executives!

But if you're curious where inequality is more bad, you may be interested to learn that—while the rich have captured the majority of income gains since the Great Recession throughout the country—in about a third of the country, the top 1% got all—all!—of the income gains between 2009 and 2012. Specifically, in Florida, California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a dozen other states.

Another awful and more long-term finding: between 1979 and 2007 (just before the recession) in Alaska, Michigan, Wyoming, and Nevada, only the top 1% saw their incomes grow, while the entire bottom 99% saw their incomes fall. That is spectacularly depressing! Twenty eight years of doom!
 
I haven't watched all of this, but I love a good connect the dots documentary. There are some pretty extraordinary claims, including that the Nazi army was built up thru funding and contracts with American industrialists like Henry Ford and the Bush family. Some pretty interesting stuff here, wonder how much is true. I have to watch in segments, it's too long.

 
Rich Colleges Get Richer and Richer


The 1%-vs-99% inequality dynamic that plagues America's economy as a whole extends to the world of higher education. And the richest universities in America had a great year last year.

This is not all that surprising, considering the fact that prestigious universities play a key role in the creation and perpetuation of America's ever-more-entrenched class system. It is only right that those catapulted to great wealth and power by elite universities would give something back, so that their own children might also be able to achieve outsize wealth and power one day. Last year was a record one for donations to colleges: a total of $37.5 billion, up nearly 11% from the year before. Of course, most of that was not going to your local community college. Inside Higher Ed notes that "The top 20 colleges in fund-raising brought in more than $10 billion. That means that 28.6 percent of the total was given to fewer than 2 percent" of schools.

The biggest recipient of all: Harvard, with $1.16 billion in donations. Stanford was second, with about $930 million, followed by USC, Northwestern, and Johns Hopkins. "Meanwhile," the Wall Street Journal says, "schools in the middle of the pack are getting a smaller slice of the philanthropic pie, as they may not have such active, wealthy or well-connected alums."

College really is a training ground for the real world—the rich get richer and etc etc. Not much to say about all this except to point out that if all that money had been donated to real charities, tens or hundreds of thousands of human lives could have been saved, but instead we have the Stanford Alumni Association.
 
The last paragraph kills the article. How much of that University fundraising would make it to the grass roots level given how charities eat up the vast majority of donations in administration costs.

Harvard recently received $350 million for the school of public health. The SPH has contributed to saving live of many by virtue of its research, programs and graduates.

Stanford has the most well developed development program of any school. They teach other universities how to ask for money. The other universities that are not as successful are that way because they do not invest the time and effort in development.

Universities raising money is what keeps them open. Tuition is only a fraction of what it costs to operate and there is little or no government funding.

Knowledge is power.
 
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