Re: JUST FOR FUN

Davoud:
He exaggerated, but Warren Buffet, a genuine billionaire, has pointed
out that he and his secretary are taxed at the same /rate/. That
should not be, Buffet said, and he is right.

Dave Typinski:
I respectfully submit that Mr. Buffet was exaggerating.

I don't think so. Mr. Buffet was referring to the bottom line, not the
tax code. But you would have to seek clarification from Mr. Buffet.

But, say he wasn't. Say he and his secretary both have a realized tax
liability of 20% of gross income. What's wrong with that? Why should
he be penalized for being successful?

You say to-mah-to, I say to-may-to. You say penalized, I say fair
share. Here's why: Mr. Buffet and his secretary are each paying 20% of
their income in taxes. That tax money is used to subsidize or outright
pay for a vast number of things that we* deem to be good and necessary
for society: good roads, good schools, law enforcement, subsidized
hospitals, student loans for medical students, volunteer fire
departments, etc. The fact is that the wealthy have better roads than
the poor and middle classes; better schools; better law enforcement;
better access to medical care; better fire departments; better
libraries, better you-name-it. Them as has is them as gets. Someone is
not getting a fair return for her tax dollars, and I posit that it is,
as it always has been and always will be, Mr. Buffet's secretary and
her kin. The wealthy get a higher percentage of the benefits, so they
should pay a higher percentage of the taxes.

Some would say, that's just the way it is--life is not fair. I would
agree, but I would also note that fairness can be legislated. It
shouldn't have to be--we shouldn't need anti-discrimination laws, but
we do and they work. Over time, those laws can even change attitudes.

It's nearly impossible for anyone who was not raised as a poor person
to grasp this; the poor cannot help but know how the wealthy live, but
the wealthy have not the slightest concept of what it is like to be
poor, or that the poor don't have the same advantages they have. Many
wealthy people even blame the poor for being poor.

I know that because I was poor for the first eighteen years of my life
(plus a few in the military). We had no paved streets in my town, no
sewer system, an unreliable water system. The VFD was some distance
away in a town that had paved streets. Our school received few
scholarships, and they amounted to a pittance. We got a school
cafeteria when state authorities were embarrassed by reports that
malnutrition was a contributing cause in the deaths of some children.
When the poorest of my cohort got sick there was no help. When I grew
up I was not among the very poorest; my dad always had a job, though he
was subject to lay-offs and time-off for the injuries that nearly all
coal miners suffer. Earlier my parents lost their first baby during the
Great Depression (soon to be known as the First Great Depression,
maybe) because no doctor would come to their one-room, no-water,
no-toilet, shack. I left that area upon graduating from high school and
eventually moved into the upper-middle economic class, but I haven't
forgotten that time and I have a great deal of concern for the people
of the area where I grew up, who are still in one of the lowest
economic classes in this country--even though they got paved roads a
few years after I left and the federal government forced local
authorities to build water and sewer systems.

Now my cohort are mostly in the same economic class that I am in, but
most of them were raised in the middle or upper-middle economic class.
Trying to tell them how I grew up just doesn't work. It is so far
outside their experience that they can't grasp it. A long-time friend
of mine talks about being raised in very modest circumstances. After
doing some comparisons, it turns out that his dad made more than five
times as much money as mine in the same era. His house cost about six
times what my dad's house cost. They had a new car. They vacationed at
a cabin at a lake in a different state. He attended a private
(Catholic) school. He was not aware that not everyone lived like that,
and I'm not sure he believes the comparisons I just listed, but they
are true. I, on the other hand, knew as a child that not everyone lived
like we did. I would not trade my childhood for his for anything in
this world, by the way.

My wife was raised in circumstances similar to mine, but on a farm.
(The average person has no concept of working until the summer before
getting a paycheck and then, due to uncontrollable circumstances,
finding that one isn't getting any money that year. None.) One Saturday
morning a couple of years ago we were driving through a larger town
about 15 miles from the one in which I was raised. She saw a long line
of people and said "It's kind of early to be going to the movies, isn't
it?" "They're not going to the movies. They're in line to get flour,
powdered milk, and dried beans. And if it is like it was when we stood
in the welfare line, the majority of those people have jobs--that's why
the handouts are scheduled for the weekends."

"You can't soak the rich. You can dampen them a bit, but you can't soak
them." --George McGovern

"We should tax the wealthy because they're the ones who have the
money." --Ben Stein

With respect, I have a fundamental disagreement with you and a large
number of others. I believe that the world would be a better place if
the first time, and every time in history, someone marked off some real
estate with some sticks and said "This is mine," or "this is my
tree/cow but I'll sell you some apples/milk," that person should have
been strung up on one of those trees as an example to other would-be
capitalists.

For a look at how capitalism made America the country that it is today,
I refer you to this non-commercial web page:
<http://www.perryopolis.com/sjpayday95.shtml>. It's about my
great-grandfather.

Davoud

* Excluding libertarians, of course.

--
Sell GM for scrap metal. The country will recover and be better in the long run
without an anti-technology lobby to drag us down.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt com
.

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