The Folly of Class Warfare, Courtesy of World Bank - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15021968
Potemkin wrote:Indeed it is, but it is the upper classes who declared that war.



Karl Marx was not of "the upper class." He rarely bothered to take a bath.
The "war" is of his imagination and your own. If you think socialism is so glorious, why aren't you living in Cuba, hmmmm? The question answers itself. Leftists are consummately ungrateful, indeed resentful. They feel entitled, booted and spurred to ride others, as Thomas Sowell has so accurately stated. You continue to play the game that has already been lost, along with 148,000,000 citizens murdered by their own socialist regimes.
#15021972
Nonsense wrote:Yes, some jobs are more desirable than others, but everybody is different, nature abhors a vacuum, so too does a market, there is a niche in the labour market to fulfill their interest or skills, in order to earn a living.
It's not for the state to tell anyone that they must do a certain job, I haven't said that, but, the state creates the economic environment, in which there is capacity for everyone to be employed in one way or another, that makes, for a normal healthy person, a situation where they say they cannot work, totally implausible & state support should be withdrawn from them.

/////



Run-on sentences, tired, ineffectual socialism. Spare the world your failed Marxism and class warfare. It hasn't worked, it can't work, despite your arrogant pretension that YOU know how to do what every other socialist cadre has failed so miserably at.

Here is Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman to straighten you and your Comrades out, if only:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ0-cDKMS5M&t=15s
#15022086
Nonsense wrote:Yes, some jobs are more desirable than others, but everybody is different, nature abhors a vacuum, so too does a market, there is a niche in the labour market to fulfill their interest or skills, in order to earn a living.
It's not for the state to tell anyone that they must do a certain job, I haven't said that, but, the state creates the economic environment, in which there is capacity for everyone to be employed in one way or another, that makes, for a normal healthy person, a situation where they say they cannot work, totally implausible & state support should be withdrawn from them.


Any intervention by the state through fiscal balancing on taxes owed, in order to raise labour wage levels, would continue until the rates for similar skill levels are approximately the same across the market & once achieved normal employer taxes would apply.

If we can raise incomes at the lowest level, so that work does really pay, we can then begin to withdraw in work benefits, because, what was formally paid directly by the state to employees on low wages, was, effectively, a state subsidy to low paying employers, that cost would, through reduced tax liabilities to low paying employers, would be withdrawn once those living wage levels are reached.

The system of tax credits that Gordon BROWN introduced into the U.K, which I believe was cloned from the U.S.A, was wrong, because it allowed employers of low pay to transfer a large proportion of their labour cost onto central government, which is always short of real money to spend, hence the use of 'credits', a kind of I.O.U by the state to low paid people, the tag, of which is picked up by taxpayers anyway.

The full cost of labour to the living wage level must be shouldered by employers, not the state, but, employer-employee taxes must be reduced to make employing people at a decent pay level economic, both from the market & social perspective.


I have a feeling (I admit this is a feeling because I have no statistics or figures for what I am going to say) that this system has to rely on cracking down on whoever not willing to "shoulder the full cost of labour" simply out of greed (instead of "the cost not being economic"), the number of which, I am afraid, might be larger than we expect.

On the other hand, if the tax system only charges profiteers, Gordon Brown's "tax credit" policy might be said as reasonable.
#15022121
MrWonderful wrote:Run-on sentences, tired, ineffectual socialism. Spare the world your failed Marxism and class warfare. It hasn't worked, it can't work, despite your arrogant pretension that YOU know how to do what every other socialist cadre has failed so miserably at.

Here is Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman to straighten you and your Comrades out, if only:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ0-cDKMS5M&t=15s



The 'problem' with trolls is, they just like to hear themselves talk, I find that it's best to leave them alone so that their ears get tired of listening to the tongue that's wagging, because the 'brain' that sits above it fails to engage itself first. :moron:
#15023961
MrWonderful wrote:Karl Marx was not of "the upper class." He rarely bothered to take a bath.

Marx didn't declare the war, he only noted that it was already in progress.
The "war" is of his imagination and your own.

No: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” ― Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett knows better than you, sorry.
If you think socialism is so glorious, why aren't you living in Cuba, hmmmm?

What a fatuous, disingenuous question. Your "logic" is the same as that of the slave owners who asked the abolitionists, "If you think emancipation is so glorious, why don't you just go live in a free state, hmmmm?" Those who oppose institutionalized injustice moving to a less unjust society hardly addresses the injustice.
The question answers itself. Leftists are consummately ungrateful, indeed resentful.

Ungrateful for having their rights to liberty forcibly stripped from them and made into the private property of the privileged? Resentful of massive, systematic, institutionalized injustice? I should hope so indeed.
They feel entitled, booted and spurred to ride others, as Thomas Sowell has so accurately stated.

GARBAGE. It is self-evidently the greedy, privileged, parasitic rich who feel more entitled, booted and spurred to ride others. The sense of entitlement of the welfare chiseler is to the sense of entitlement of the landowner as the brightness of the moon is to the brightness of the sun.
You continue to play the game that has already been lost, along with 148,000,000 citizens murdered by their own socialist regimes.

It's true that socialism kills more of its citizens, on average, than capitalism: averaging about 0.5% of the population per year vs 0.2% for capitalism. But capitalism has killed billions. It just took more time, and more societies using the system, to do it.
#15026194
Palmyrene wrote:Class warfare cannot be orchestrated by the state via taxation.

Nonsense. State taxation of working people's wages and consumption to fund large-scale subsidization of the privileged is class warfare in its classic form.
It can only be done by the working class and via unionization and formation of dual power to fight against the powers of state and capitalism.

Nope. See above. The state started the class war by taxation, it can end it by taxation.
#15026198
Nonsense wrote:As I have stated above, employers should carry the burden of paying a living wage, not using the excuse of a going 'market rate' for which to pay lower rates(an argument against migration-which is both 'Liberal' & 'Socialist'), which are then topped up by taxpayers.

No. Employers are just responding to the market environment. It is up to government to create a market environment where everyone who is able and willing to work can earn a living. In the current market environment, people have been stripped of their liberty rights to access economic opportunity, so they have to pay landowners full market value just for permission to work in order to avoid starvation, must then pay taxes on their wages and consumption to fund public provision of desirable services and infrastructure, and must then pay landowners again just for permission to access the desirable services and infrastructure their taxes just paid for. That's on top of feeding themselves and their families. No wonder they "can't earn a living wage"! They are being systematically robbed of their rightful wages to support rich, greedy, privileged parasites.
#15026208
Truth To Power wrote:Nonsense. State taxation of working people's wages and consumption to fund large-scale subsidization of the privileged is class warfare in its classic form.

Nope. See above. The state started the class war by taxation, it can end it by taxation.


States are the play things of the wealthy. You can't fight back using taxation, taxation was originally used by the upper class.
#15026356
Palmyrene wrote:States are the play things of the wealthy. You can't fight back using taxation, taxation was originally used by the upper class.


For working class people in the U.K, income tax is 'deducted at source' from their 'Gross' income, so, if you are employed by an employer, that employer is legally obliged to deduct taxes, national insurance, along with any other 'legally' defined deductions, before you receive your 'Net' pay.

From the 'Net' pay, there are 'cost' involved in travel to - fro from work to home, for which self-employed people can work the system to their advantage to avoid, but which employees cannot do so & only travel from workplace-workplace is tax allowable.

After travel to work cost, there is rent to pay for those whose incomes are too low to afford them the means to buy their own property.

Then there are 'spending' taxes on disposable incomes, such as V.A.T, Insurance Premium Tax, along with many other 'Stealth' taxes.

Although the state hands back a small proportion to some families by way of tax 'credits', along with Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, also Universal Credit, all of those things are mere 'sticking plasters' on the system that generates jobs at the lowest rate for employers, but, which then has to tax everyone else for,excluding the rich or better-off-because they alone get tax cuts which raise the tax gap between what the government spends & receives by way of tax revenues.

So, MP's run the system for their rich, well-off 'friends' & want the working peasants to pay the taxes that keep the section of society that has an inflated 'sense-of-entitlement'.
#15026393
Palmyrene wrote:States are the play things of the wealthy.

Except when they aren't. It's clear that ancient Sparta, for example, was not a plaything of the wealthy. Neither was the Soviet Union, or Castro's Cuba. It's up to the people to decide whom the state will serve.
You can't fight back using taxation, taxation was originally used by the upper class.

You can definitely fight back using taxation, as the US experience in the period from 1933-1980 showed. The fact that the upper class always try to turn taxation to their advantage doesn't mean we have to let them.
#15026398
Truth To Power wrote:Except when they aren't. It's clear that ancient Sparta, for example, was not a plaything of the wealthy. Neither was the Soviet Union, or Castro's Cuba. It's up to the people to decide whom the state will serve.


Sparta did have an economic caste system based on property ownership even though it had a strong martial culture. The Soviet Union and Cuba can be both considered "playthings of the wealthy" if we broaden what "wealth" is. Both these states had a highly priviliged bureaucratic class that utilized their power to make the lower classes play by different rules than them.

You can definitely fight back using taxation, as the US experience in the period from 1933-1980 showed. The fact that the upper class always try to turn taxation to their advantage doesn't mean we have to let them.


What experiences from 1933-1980?
#15026404
Palmyrene wrote:Sparta did have an economic caste system based on property ownership even though it had a strong martial culture.

And the wealthy paid almost all the taxes. You are therefore proved wrong. Again.
The Soviet Union and Cuba can be both considered "playthings of the wealthy" if we broaden what "wealth" is.

So that it becomes meaningless. Right. "Playgrounds of the wealthy" where the actual wealthy were stripped of their wealth and/or exterminated, as in Mao's China....?

You are a joke.
Both these states had a highly priviliged bureaucratic class that utilized their power to make the lower classes play by different rules than them.

But it was based on POLITICAL POWER, not WEALTH.

You are therefore WRONG.

You are OBJECTIVELY WRONG.

You have been PROVED OBJECTIVELY WRONG.

I am not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.

Now it is your choice if you will learn from that experience of being PROVED OBJECTIVELY WRONG.
What experiences from 1933-1980?

The decline in inequality of wealth and income.
#15026408
Truth To Power wrote:And the wealthy paid almost all the taxes. You are therefore proved wrong. Again.


I'm going to need citation for that because they didn't even have taxes as we know them today.

So that it becomes meaningless. Right. "Playgrounds of the wealthy" where the actual wealthy were stripped of their wealth and/or exterminated, as in Mao's China....?

You are a joke.


Wealth is, in the end, not about how much money you have but the amount of resources you have and your access to new resources. It does not make meaningless, it makes it more useful to understanding how society works. Taking control of the wealth of others and giving to other people doesn't stop wealth from governing how the state is run.

Honestly the only person being a joke is you. You're the only one taking this conversation seriously.

But it was based on POLITICAL POWER, not WEALTH.

You are therefore WRONG.

You are OBJECTIVELY WRONG.

You have been PROVED OBJECTIVELY WRONG.

I am not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.

Now it is your choice if you will learn from that experience of being PROVED OBJECTIVELY WRONG.


Wealth is political power. Screaming "WRONG!" in all caps won't change that.

The decline in inequality of wealth and income.


That's definitely not primarily due to higher taxation on the wealthy.
#15026623
Palmyrene wrote:I'm going to need citation for that because they didn't even have taxes as we know them today.

"Allegedly as part of the Lycurgan Reforms in the mid-8th century BC, a massive land reform had divided property into 9,000 equal portions. Each citizen received one estate, a kleros, which was expected to provide his living.[86] The land was worked by helots who retained half the yield. From the other half, the Spartiate was expected to pay his mess (syssitia) fees, and the agoge fees for his children."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta#Citizenship
Wealth is, in the end, not about how much money you have but the amount of resources you have and your access to new resources.

No, it's about how much you OWN.
It does not make meaningless, it makes it more useful to understanding how society works.

Nope.
Taking control of the wealth of others and giving to other people doesn't stop wealth from governing how the state is run.

Yes, it does.
You're the only one taking this conversation seriously.

Why do you keep answering?
Wealth is political power.

Wrong, as proved by the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, etc. Wealth can often buy political power, but they are not the same. You're just wrong.
Screaming "WRONG!" in all caps won't change that.

And saying identification of the fact that your claim is false won't change it won't change the fact that it is false.
That's definitely not primarily due to higher taxation on the wealthy.

It might not be primary, but it was important.
#15026626
Truth To Power wrote:"Allegedly as part of the Lycurgan Reforms in the mid-8th century BC, a massive land reform had divided property into 9,000 equal portions. Each citizen received one estate, a kleros, which was expected to provide his living.[86] The land was worked by helots who retained half the yield. From the other half, the Spartiate was expected to pay his mess (syssitia) fees, and the agoge fees for his children."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta#Citizenship


Read the second paragraph afterward:

However, from early on there were marked differences of wealth within the state, and these became more serious after the law of Epitadeus some time after the Peloponnesian War, which removed the legal prohibition on the gift or bequest of land.[22][88] By the mid-5th century, land had become concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, and the notion that all Spartan citizens were equals had become an empty pretence. By Aristotle's day (384–322 BC) citizenship had been reduced from 9,000 to less than 1,000, then further decreased to 700 at the accession of Agis IV in 244 BC. Attempts were made to remedy this by imposing legal penalties upon bachelors,[22] but this could not reverse the trend.


Read please.

No, it's about how much you OWN.


The fuck do you think I just said? And the amount of access to new resources is a prerequisite to actually owning resources. They have to be obtained somehow and to initially get those resources you must have access to them in the first place. Thus, it is an indicator of wealth.

Otherwise, you could say owning loads of money doesn't indicate wealth which clearly isn't the case.

Nope.


Yes it does. In fact you half-agreed with me in the above.

Yes, it does.


No it doesn't as you can see with the Sparta example you gave or when the Soviet Union, before it fell, gave citizens equal shares in it's enterprises but eventually it resulted in an oligarchy.

Taking 100 dollars from person A and giving it to person B just changes whose in power (i.e. person B). It does not deal with the fundamental problem: wealth itself. That's why the Soviet Union failed.

Why do you keep answering?


Because unlike other posters, you don't write that much which makes it easier to debate you with typing on a phone.

And you don't put up much of a fight.

Wrong, as proved by the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, etc. Wealth can often buy political power, but they are not the same. You're just wrong.


What about the French and Russian Revolution? How does that prove anything? And wealth is political power; pointing to revolutions isn't proof that it isn't.

And saying identification of the fact that your claim is false won't change it won't change the fact that it is false.


It's still true whether you like it or not.

It might not be primary, but it was important.


If it's not primary then it doesn't fit your point. You can't fight the rich with taxation. That was never how the poor even fought against the rich historically either.
#15026749
Actually @Truth To Power is correct here; on the US point atleast, didn't read most of the posts. :lol:
The golden age for the US working and middle classes and when the majority were middle class and had significant living standards (i.e. when the US was really #1) was in the time period between the new deal and the 80s with the tax rate on the wealthy and corporations reaching up to 90% and the tax revenue was spent on development programs.

It's only when citizens united came along that it screwed up everyone on the behest of the wealthy.
There is a reason why everyone wants a new new deal in the US right now.

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