Be A Budget Hero

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Of course it matters who they are. That's the point of this whole fucking discussion. Get your metaphors straight and come back and play later.

LOL

The whole point of the metaphor was that they were three STRANGERS; you don't know anything about them. They could all be billionaires, or they could all have $45,000 of credit card debt.

The point is, it doesn't matter if they are billionaires or up to their eye balls in debt, they are still responsible for their portion (1/4) of the cab ride.

You may try to tell me otherwise, but you cannot convince me in your personal life that when you divide up payment you do it by who has the most money at the time.

 

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I was assuming they were being used as personifications of rich and non-rich. So my answers still apply. .

Well then there is no way that you know whether or not the wal-mart lady is using more or less resources then Bill Gates if you are operating under the assumption that they are personfications of rich and non-rich.


Like I said, the rich person could be using far less resources then the poor person in many conceviable scenarios.

 

[ColdBlooded]

Well then there is no way that you know whether or not the wal-mart lady is using more or less resources then Bill Gates if you are operating under the assumption that they are personfications of rich and non-rich.

Yes I can

Like I said, the rich person could be using far less resources then the poor person in many conceviable scenarios.

I seriously doubt it.

 

[ColdBlooded]

LOL

The whole point of the metaphor was that they were three STRANGERS; you don't know anything about them. They could all be billionaires, or they could all have $45,000 of credit card debt.

The point is, it doesn't matter if they are billionaires or up to their eye balls in debt, they are still responsible for their portion (1/4) of the cab ride.

You may try to tell me otherwise, but you cannot convince me in your personal life that when you divide up payment you do it by who has the most money at the time.

That's because your metaphor is faulty. At least your application of it is.

If by cab fare you mean tax burden and by wallet you mean wealth and the people in the cab you mean tax payers then you have to stick to those definitions(not to mention the metaphor not even being needed or valuable to the discussion).

And if you are just talking about a straight up cab ride I'd question even more what you're doing in this thread.

 

[synical dj]

battle of the Mr.'s: Who's Logic Shall Prevail?

 

[ColdBlooded]

battle of the Mr.'s: Who's Logic Shall Prevail?

 

[ColdBlooded]

The great capitalist hero Adam Smith said in Weath of Nations:

• "The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. . . . It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."

Compared to the current system, a flat tax system would leave poor families with 16-22% less to live on than they have today, and the wealthiest 1% with 12% more.

 

[Mr. Nice Guy]

The great capitalist hero Adam Smith said in Weath of Nations:

• "The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. . . . It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."

Compared to the current system, a flat tax system would leave poor families with 16-22% less to live on than they have today, and the wealthiest 1% with 12% more.

To be fair, I am not advocating for a flat tax system, because that still places a disproportional amount of the public financial burden on certain people simply because of the arbitrary reason that they posses more wealth.

I would advocate that if, as crude example, our National Budget was 2.9 trillion dollars and there were 150 million citizens eligible to be taxed that each person would be responsible to pay $19,333 to live in this country. However, National Budget is extremely bloated and should be cut significantly, so the amount due per person would also fall significantly.

Moving on, the only argument I have seen you make so far is that wealthy people should shoulder a higher portion of the public burden simply because they CAN and our current system requires that they do so; without any logic or reason as to why. Essentially “the rich have money, the poor need money; the rich should give their money to the poor”. There is no logic in that.

I make no argument against the notion that the lower class struggles to pay for some of the basic items; but I fail to see the correlation between being wealthy and being mandated to subsidize that burden.

Being wealthy is in no way a direct and infallible indicator of the amount of resources one will use, and therefore should not be used as a reason why the wealthy should shoulder more of the burden either.

I would accept that people should pay for whatever portion of the government/public/social services they use, because at least that would provide a logical distribution of public burden.