Assuming their time is worth nothing to them and that they have an infinite amount of it.

I can tell you that I value my free hours and if taxes are too high I would work less if instead of making X per hour I'd make Y per hour, with Y being X after the new taxes and Y being below the amount I value my time at.

Don't call things "bull" if you don't understand them!

All definitions are selective. That's what a "definition" is. His definition of "redistribution of wealth" is very precise.

Sodaiho, the fact that you DISAGREE with the theory that lowering taxes can actually increase government income (because it stimulates the economy) doesn't mean that conservatives don't address the "problem".

In fact the "problem" only exists when one confuses relative and absolutel numbers. While 10% of X is less than 20% of X, it is not necessarily less than 20% of Y, with Y being a number greater or smaller than X.

The "problem of lower taxes" exists when taxes are lower in absolute terms.

I like word games myself, but I don't think they are a substitute for a point.

But by taking the term "lower taxes" and pretending that it refers to an absolute number, even though conservatives argue that a lowe tax rate will actually result in higher tax income IS a word game.

I am myself not convinced that a deficit is a bad thing. Governments can borrow money for far better conditions than anybody else.

Hey, I'm all for what is called "redistribution" although, I would simply call it "distribution"

But no matter. Whatever you choose to call it really isn't important. A rose by any other name, right?

But here's the point behind "distribution", and it's one that was figured out quite well by a capitalist.

Henry Ford realized that the ideal situation both for himself and his company would be if his own workers could afford to buy the products they were making. So, on a purely hypothetical basis let's say his personal take home profit was 20 million dollars, but if he cut that to 15 or 10 million dollars and upped his workers wages, they could all buy brand new model-T's (or whatever) and probably at the same time, if they saved responsibly, scrape together enough for a downpayment on a home in their town.

So, Mr. Ford personally takes a cut to his profit. But his company sees increased sales, his workers are happier and more productive, therefore increasing his company's productivity, and his shareholders are happier that the company's making a healthier profit AND more productive, and this has the added bonus of attracting more investors.

On top of it, the town is very happy with Ford as all the Ford factory workers are buying houses and adding to the municipalities revenue through property taxes and the like, meaning that the town can afford to pave the roads and upgrade their water treatment system (both of which benefit Ford indirectly anyway) All of the other businesses in town also benefit from the fact that Mr. Ford's workers are making more money because they are spending that money directly in the local economy on goods and services in the town (they aren't squirelling it away in swiss bank accounts!) So this causes other businesses to grow in town, and some of the employees of those businesses end up buying even more model-T's from Ford!

You see, Mr. Ford has learned the lesson that if more people can afford to buy his product and the local economy is better off, it will come back to benefit his company immensely or even cycle the money back to him indirectly (increased sales bring more investors, etc)

So, everyone can win, if we just go by the basic rule we supposedly learned in Kindergarten to share our toys.

The importance of this kind of "distribution" of wealth cannot be underestimated as it has many far-reaching implications.

When all of Mr. Ford's factory workers can afford a car, a house, and still put a little money in the bank...not going into debt... that means they're secure and happy, not living paycheque to paycheque. This does wonders for the community, and means that the children of the Ford factory workers will probably get a decent education and good upbringing (usually when parents are happy so are kids). The Ford factory workers themselves, now that they are not worrying about taking out a predatory payday loan to pay the light bill, will probably get a little more active in politics whether at the municipal, state or federal level.

This goes back to the whole educated citizenry thing. When people have the time and aren't worrying about survival, they generally tend to improve themselves. When people improve themselves everyone benefits. As Mr. Ford's workers improve themselves, not only are they happier but perhaps they are more innovative on the job and come up with some creative ways to increase production. Going one step further, many of his brighter employees will be prime candidates for manager positions a few years down the road, which will be easier on Ford as it won't have to bring in someone from outside the company and get them established in town.

But anywho. Let's zoom out for a moment- this goes back to a basic law of nature. Any system, whether it be an organism or weather system, does it's best when at equilibrium. All systems in nature attempt to reach and maintain equilibrium.

What is equilibrium?

It's more or less a sustainable distribution of energy. If you'll harken back to your days in high school math (or if you took physics or electronics) life is a sine wave. It always has and always will be!

Society functions best when as much of the waveform as possible is above the poverty line... if you have too much power concentrated in only a few hands, you end up getting something called a pure carrier, which is a graph that has a very, very sharply steeped curve that rises very far while pretty much everything else is down at the noise floor. If you distribute the energy, you have the bulk of the populace doing good, with a little bit at the top and a little bit at the bottom with everyone else in the middle- the middle class! Overall, the peak of the carrier ends up being much lower than a pure carrier, but this leads to the question-

What situation results in society being better off?

1) Are we better off if most of the power is concentrated in a few hands while everyone else gets almost nothing?

2) Are we better off if the power is distributed more or less equally. Yes, there is still a "top" but it is considerably lower than if all the power was concentrated, whereas more people are better educated and generally well off.

If wealth is not "distributed" or redistributed or whatever you want to call it, then we will eventually end up back in a Feudal society in which the have's live in castles while the have-nots end up doing all the work and fighting wars between fiefs on behalf of the haves!

If wealth is not distributed then we will go back to the days of debtor prisons and company towns in which the workers are forever beholden to the company store for their entire lives....coal mining towns from the 19th century anyone?

He wasn't narrowing the definition. He just gave a definition.

"Redistribution" is a form of "distribution".

What's your problem with his definition? Cannot use it for propaganda?

I apologize for any confusion.

I was using the analogy of a hypothetical Mr. Ford and his factory workers to illustrate that if wealth is distributed between a larger segment of the populace, society benefits more than the "king of the hill" model in which a small number of people sit at the top of a massive hill and "trickle down"  a few crumbs to those at the bottom.

Since we can only expect to function reasonably as a society of laws and NOT a society of men, the distribution of wealth needs to be legislated, not left to volunary means. This works both ways as it protects BOTH parties as opposed to leaving this distribution to the whims of a rabid marxist who would redistribute every last cent equally between working and non-working folk and a robber-baron capitalist who would go by the "winner take all" mentality in which the CEO takes home a cool hundred million paycheque and lives in a gated mansion while the surrounding town is a barrio!

Yes, voluntary is fine but there are very few Mr. Fords and very many Jeff Skilling's and Ken Lay's.

Wealth redistribution includes any benefit someone receives at the expense of others, even if it's just at a state level. If my money pays for a school or a park for people that didn't pay anything you have x taking money from y to give to z. Even if you had flat tax the wealthy would still be having money taken from them and given to others.

You, taltamir and others are narrowing the term to only include an increase in the level of wealth distribution by the increase of the progressive tax system. That is only part of the definition and the one who's ignoring the complete meaning of a term is the one is the one trying to make that term fit their agenda.

There are strong arguments on both sides of the flat tax progressive tax argument. The tipping point for me is a flat tax increases an already increasing wealth divide and I and others have explained why we feel that is bad for our society.

That's just hyperbole.

I did respond, I said most would choose not to make even less than resulted from the tax increase.

No.  And no one has come up with a good reason why they should.

Hold spending (note not cut - but to liberals that means a cut) at a fixed level and let revenues catch up.  The problem is not too few taxes, but too much spending.  A foreign concept to many I am sure.

And I am absolutely right, it does decrease the incensitive. Will it decrease it enough to make everyone work less? no, but it will make SOME people work less. How many depends on how much you increase it. hence "lower incentive" and not "destroy the incentive".

You seem to not grasp what redistribute means. If I am taxed more lightly then a richer person for a service we both receive, say police protection, and we receive it to differing amounts, and the government has a legal monopoly on that service, then no redistribution occured. Every USAGE of funds is technically a DISTRIBUTION of funds... Redistribution of wealth means the government takes MONEY from party A and give to party B. "Distribution of WEALTH" as you call it can only be used on a graph to show how much money each person has (like the one posted earlier); so I am a bit baffled why you decided to change its definition to mean redistribution of wealth and redifining that as taking less from the rich then you did before (but still more overall) and use it to provide a service to everyone..

It shocks many.

Quote of the day .

Here is a better one, try spending "local police budget per citizen" / "college subsidy" on beer and smokes.

If the rich are taxed more heavily to provide better police protection it is quite different then if they are taxed more heavily to give someone a check.

What? that statement has nothing to do with taxation.

Simple enough - it's our patriotic duty.  Just like it was the serfs' patriotic duty to farm for the Czar.  Just like it was the patriotic duty of every Chinese to carry a Little Red Book during Mao's dictatorship.  Nothing wrong with it, after all, it's just our duty.

First, it would be true if someone else is footing your bill instead of you.  However services are not all structured that way, and most are not.  You cant get out of paying for your drivers license, and you cant use it for buying food.

Second, no, most of us are well aware that what Obama is doing is not new.  But like a little bit of thiamin is good for you, too much is fatal.  Obama wants us to OD on it.

We must have read different newspapers again, because the only countries that I know that have implemented a flat tax are in eastern Europe (with very few exceptions). No countries in south America (except Guyana and one other I believe) and no countries in Asia (except those of of the former Soviet Union) have implemented a flat tax.

The east-European countries that implemented flat tax are experiencing massive economic growth. Lithuania and Estonia come to mind. Unemployment went down and tax revenue actually went up. Hungary, Poland, and Greece are considering introducing a flat tax system.

Russia is the only G8 country with a flat tax.