Who should be responsible for the poor?

They are responsible for themselves.

No government, but no leaving people helpless either. It would be nice if community would step up and help people get aid when needed, and cut them loose if they begin to take advantage.

I think the question that needs to be addressed is how people become poor, and what forces keep them poor. Anthropologists call this “structural” damage or violence. It is a way of looking upstream to detect the political, social, economic, medical, legal, and historical causes for a given condition.

As an example, Haiti is a very poor state because after the slave revolt it was sanctioned by the whole Western world, which were still slavers themselves, and wanted to punish the revolutionaries. The sequellae continue before our eyes.

Well i first of all think that our gov. should be helping our poor and homless before we spend all our time and money helping out every other country.

I think the government should be responsible for ensuring all citizens have equal access to basic resources (healthcare, education, housing, etc). I think the community should ensure that the poor are in the position to receive those resources, by doing whatever is within reason to assist. I think it is a crime against humanity not to make any effort to help the poor. Yet, ultimately, it is up to the individual to receive help and take responsibility for his/her self-care. Unfortunately, there are those because of circumstances beyond their control, will not ever be able to take care of themselves. The community has a moral responsibility to care for those most vulnerable.

If it was always as easy as just “digging yourself out”, I would say certainly the government shouldn’t have any part in taking care of the poor.
But it isn’t. So they should.

There are some vocational training programs in various states that are actively training the homeless and destitute so they ca be productive and eventually fend for themselves. This could be a great help and I believe this should be subsidized by the government.

The problem lies (this has been mentioned before in different words) not in the fact that people are poor, but why they are. Regardless of the amount of training you have, if there are no jobs available you’re stuck in the same hole.

It’s a complex question. People need to be able to pull their own weight as much as they are able. Nobody likes a parasite. However, I think a lot of the issue depends on why they’re poor. Are they permanently lazy or are they in a tight spot (like a layoff) where a little bit of help (say, food stamps and retraining) will get them back into a stable situation again?

Programs designed to help the less fortunate are a great boon to society if they help people help themselves. In fact, that’s one good reason to have a civilization, or tribe, or family unit – to have a way to be caught when you fall, as long as you help them when it’s their turn. In this way, I think it’s everyone’s responsibility.

Something else people often don’t think of when pondering this question: social unrest. When the inequity in a given society is very polarized, with rich “haves” and a multitude of poor “have nots,” you end up with nasty things like crime and even revolutions. Especially when the reason the have-nots are poor is because of the aggression of the haves, they will often take matters into their own hands rather than consent to die quietly in a corner. An equitable society is more peaceful, which is the responsibility of everyone interested in living during peacetime.

I believe that we are responsible for one another, for those “less fortunate,” we are our “brothers’ keepers,” but, we are not required to be taken advantage of in the process. That’s my philosophy regarding our responsibility for the poor, in a nutshell.

A lot of homeless people have drug addictions or psychological problems. Treat those issues and you can expect a drop in homelessness. I believe in helping people get to the point where they can be self sustaining. Therefore I don’t believe in handouts because if you enable someone, they have no need to change their lives.

This is a subject that irritates me greatly. As a general rule, poor people have no one to blame but themselves. The middle and upper classes should not be forced to carry the tax burden that the government pushes on them to take care of the poor.

To be clear, poor people who do not have the physical or mental capabilities to be gainfully employed are different than those who just choose not to. If someone is disabled, the government has a duty to provide some assistance.

There has always been and always will be the less fortunete.
Be it Leprosy, mental illness, handicap or drug addiction.

Whether the beggar in Calcutta or the street person in Los Angeles.

I handed a homeless guy a $20 a few weeks ago, the look in his eyes…priceless.

I am not pro enabling but I am pro, my brother/sisters keeper.

I am not talking about a religious perspective, but a human perspective.

We are one.

What happens to another could happen to me.

We are ALL responsable for random acts of kindness and lending a helping hand whenever.

I can’t stand arrogance…...just GIVE and keep your superiority trips under wraps! Grrrrr!

So, @iam2smart99037 the Haitians I discussed are responsible for their own state? Could you explain that to me please? I am having a hard time understanding how that works.

We are all in it together.

Go Chaz!

People should have the basics for growth…How can the poor get food if all the farmland is fenced off…if the poor should fend for themselves then they should have a share of the land so that they can work it…some would work more If they had their own office or business space…I would be more productive if I had small business to open my own bookstore…But since the means of getting that store is off limits (because all the resources are claimed already imagine a Monopoly game in which you start the game and the other players already own all of the land…you can never get ahead and people have to give you money to continue playing) to me I will sleep in and take the next year off and live with my parents…in protest

If we all chipped in a bit, no one would have to go hungry. The rich can afford to give a bit more, and they should.

@dpworkin – Comparing Haiti’s poverty to the United States poverty is comparing apples to oranges. Economically, these countries are quite different. The impression I get is that the original poster is not asking why third world countries aren’t as developed as the US or Europe, but is asking what the government’s role is when it comes to supporting the poor in developed countries.

OK, let’s consider the position of tubercular or diabetic Hispanics in Upper Manhattan, in New York. Did you know that New York City leads the world in deaths by tuberculosis? Did you know that people of lower SES are many times more likely to have uncontrolled diabetes, and 80% more likely to go blind or suffer an amputation as a result? How shall we manage these conditions, and how are these people responsible for their condition, please.

I think that the poor are responsible for themselves, but the government could lend out the hand to help put them on the right path.

@dpworkin – To be clear, poor people who do not have the physical or mental capabilities to be gainfully employed are different than those who just choose not to (be gainfully employed). If someone is disabled, the government has a duty to provide some assistance.

Well, it’s getting late, and I need to go to sleep, but I am looking forward to discussing the issue of “choice” with you sometime soon.

I think what people lose touch with are that there are many many hard working poor people. If they have no degree and few skills, they may work as hotel maids or waitresses or migrant farm workers and just barely get by. Still they might work very hard. I have helped a few people with a “leg up” not a hand out. I ask, what is getting in your way? The car broke down. They have no way to work. They can’t afford the day care. Nobody will watch the kids. Some people work very hard, with their teeth hurting because they can’t afford a dentist, sick because they can’t afford medicine, and then one day the car doesn’t start and they hear “you’re fired” on the phone when they call in to work one time too many.

It isn’t necessarily because they aren’t trying, are lazy. There are many preceding complications in their lives that are hard to correct. Including early and unwanted pregnancies, insufficient job skills, fathers that run off. Probably the one that stands out most is a lack of a supportive extended family. Many people have a supportive family. Grandma is watching the kids while mommy works and uncle Fred fixes the car every time it dies. Such a single mother has a solid support base and might even call family members for rides.

Some people have nobody, no support system. Little problems in life leave them hung out to dry simply because they have nobody. The very hardest cases to solve are people who have made mistakes in their youth, with a record to show it. Society, and employers in particular, don’t seem to want to give them a second chance. Every background check, or job application that asks them if they have prior convictions, dooms them to stay stuck because of some stupid move they made at age 19 or 20.

What have I done? Sometimes I give money. A lot of times though, I spend a day with them and help sort out the daycare and transportation and other obstacles. Sometimes I will pay them to clean my house then tell them to use me as a reference, because they lack references. I help them find resources. Sometimes it is something as little as letting them use my phone number because they don’t have a phone.

I used to live in a poor area. I have moved and lost touch with the glaring poverty I once lived near every day. I have not forgotten their stories, or their plights. There are so many dysfunctions piled on dysfunctions. They usually grow up in dysfunction, have poor coping and interpersonal skills, poor role models and poor education. This is not a simple thing to fix.

There is a big difference between being born in a “good” home, given a “good” start in life, an education, (@iam2smart I bet your mom and dad bought you your first car.) I think some people don’t have any idea what it takes to start with literally nothing and claw your way up.

We are all responsible for each other in addition to being responsible for ourselves. It is the most efficient way to live. If we stop caring for others just because they are not well off, we lose so much. We lose their thinking and their work. We lose potential inventions. We lose money because we have to pay more for their health care and their education and their incarceration.

We lose more because they can’t take care of their cars, and they pollute more. We get uglier cities because they take less pride in their homes (which they don’t own) and they litter more. We lose because they have more house fires and more emergencies and on and on. We pay for their poverty in so many ways. It would be so much more cost effective to help the get out of poverty than it is to let them stay there.

Society should be responsible to give them a “Hand Up Not a Hand Out !!
You’ll be surprise how many people are just a couple of paychecks away from being homeless !

our government should be a leader in helping our own, instead of being a superpower.
The heathcare plan is included in this.
Compassionate souls also have the heart to give to those in need.

Remember it could be us in the poor house and not them in any moment.

Everyone should be responsible for everyone.

I do not believe in welfare for any who are able to work and can find work to do. I think the Republican backed move, signed into law by Bill Clinton, to switch from Welfare to Workfare as much as possible was a great idea. I’d like to see it extended to providing needed education, job training and even work—say doing highway maintenance or cleaning up natonal parks—for all who need it.

But I think the right to live is the most fundamental human right there is. I want to live. I want my wife, and my children, and neighbors and evenpeople I don’t know to live every hour and minute they can.

I don’t want to see people starve or live lives of utter hopelessness because they are not up to average intelligence, have some handicap, or are mentally ill. I think living in a society that puts the value of one human life above the value of “My money’s MINE and you keep your filthy gubment hands off of it” is worth paying a bit in taxes to put a safety net there. Any one of us, the brightest among us, could suffer a stroke tomorrow that would leave us so mentally and physically challenged that we would never again be able to work—but we would still want to live.

I don’t want to live in a country where personal greed is so strong a force that we simply let people die, or condemn them and their families to filthy ghettos just so we can have a bit lower taxes.

The universe bears responsibility for all of planet Earth’s woes.

@wundayatta, @ragingloli

This.

And anyway people need to realize that in many cases the poor are trying to be responsible and are making all the right decisions and, whether for bureaucratic or social reasons, are still unable to maintain jobs or otherwise find steady means of income.

Say you’ve lost your teeth for some reason and don’t have the money to replace them, i.e. you’re already poor. Who’s going to hire someone without teeth when there are other applicants who do have teeth? It sounds superficial and unlikely, maybe, but that’s unfortunately how it works sometimes.

The teeth example comes from my memory somewhere, but I think it was covered in a book called The Working Poor.

1 2 3 not it!

Yes…just drives home the fact that everything can go poof in a heartbeat.

My life savings is down by 75k this last 18 months…I could very well be a toothless 80 yr. old. lol

No laughing matter.

I’m poor, but I live in Hawaii so it’s alright.

I hate to get Biblical, but the Bible says, “The LOVE of money is the root of all evil.” When people love their money so much that they can walk by a starving or hurting person without an ounce of compassion then civilization is doomed.
Because I have been given much I have a responsibility to care for my fellow man. If I do that in the voting booth or at the local private mission or if I take care of the sick over seas, it’s all the same. Using “personal responsibility” as an excuse to feed my greed is just sick and so hypocritical when Christians do it. It makes me want to cry.

The majority of the poor are the elderly, the disabled and children. I guess we could bring back Victorian workhouses where they can pick oakum 12 hours a day for a bowl of gruel and a pile of moldy rags to sleep on.

Seriously, the answer isn’t get a job, either. Where are the thousands of laid off factory workers from the NUMMI plant in Fremont and it’s vendors going to find work?

According to Time, for every available job:
In Retail there are 6 unemployed people
In manufacturing nondurables, 7
In transportation & utilities,11
In mining and oil drilling, 14
In maufacturing durable goods (like the auto industry), 16
In construction, 34

According to the Preamble to the Constitution, one of the reasons we started this country was “to promote the common welfare”, that is, to help each other.

@galileogirl Agreed, and that is why I find myself quoting the Universal Decparation of Human Rights a lot in these sort of discussions.

“Article 25.

* (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Now, many (especially Conservatives) seem to think that the only people who don’t have jobs are those too lazy to work and the poor choose to be poor so therefore anybody who isn’t medically disabled can suffer. As for the elderly, they should have invested better when they were working, so if they are poor now, tough shit. These same people also denigrate the UDHR since they refuse to give up any sovereignty to a bunch of Socialist wimps.

Personally, I feel that all citizens deserve three hots and a cot plus the means to work. For where I am, that means a car since there is no mass transit to where I work… but I am also barely rich enough to afford a 25-year-old beater and the gas and insurance to make it to work. Unfortunately, our society also demands a phone and internet access, but if we had the infrastructure that every other nation had, that would be cheap. Hell, right now I only pay $20/month for DSL and have a $50 “recycled” desktop system; not the spiffiest thing, but not terribly pricey either. If it weren’t for that internet access, I never would’ve been able to look for work and would still be unemployed! (And no, public access terminals don’t cut it. I had to spend more than 1 hour a day looking.)

That said, there are things that must be earned. I don’t think that those on welfare should drive better cars than I do, and seeing some slacker ne’er-do-well in a brand new Mustang really chaps my ass. As much as I’d like a new Nissan GT-R, I acknowledge that I haven’t earned it yet. There are many other “toys” I’d like that I haven’t earned, yet there are executives that get multi-million dollar “performance bonuses” for driving their companies into bankruptcy. Yet there are people that say that that is more than fair. WTF?!

@jerv Think of the bureaucracy needed to micromanage the spending habits of millions. And how do you know the welfare recipient owns a better car than you do. I was never on welfare but when I was between cars for a year and a half, I rented a nice midsized car one weekend/mo to do a big shopping and run errands. I couldn’t afford $400/mo but I could afford $35.

And as much as we would like to see the EIC put in the bank in case of emergencies, some families might buy a Wii and a laptop to keep their kids off the streets. I am more concerned about the much higher corporate welfare the govt allows.

@jerv One of my favorite things, favorite documents in the world and one of the greatest outlines of human rights, and human decency, in the world, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

life is fair; society is not… law protects the greedy too much…If there were no government those who are stronger would survive and it would be survival of the fittest again…should we go back to that system… I would be a warlord and ruler in short while…but I behave so I’m poor…because I’m not evil enough to fight for my fair share of work as well as money…I’m not lazy.

Good morning, @iam2smart99037. Let me point out that I used Haiti as an example because the structural violence there is so clear and unambiguous, but I would argue that for every single pocket of low SES in the United States (Appalachia, parts of the Deep South, New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburgh, you may extend the list as long as you please) there are structural reasons for the poverty one finds.

I suggest that if the structural reasons for the poverty are addressed, the actual poverty will diminish. There may be (I don’t know how you would prove it) a vanishingly small number of the chronically poor who are just lazy assholes and deserve what they get, but how can all of these people in all of these places have decided that they would just rather be lazy? Especially when it is inherent in humanity to wish to be productive and responsible, and that people who are taught how tend to flourish.

It rather reminds me of the post-liberation films of Jewish concentration camp survivors, who had previously been accused of the Nazis of “delighting in being filthy” gratefully bathing in the hot showers provided by the British.

@escapedone7 such a wonderful answer

I agree, @escapedone7 for the win.

“our government should be a leader in helping our own”
That is the problem too. Let’s wait for Daddy government to fix it.

“ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

@galileogirl I’ve seen it more than a few times. More than more than a few actually. It’s usually the working stiff that winds up with the beaters.

Imagine working many miles away where the buses don’t run and trying that. Your situation is different from mine, and my transportation needs are greater. I generally buy cars that cost <$500. My current one was $300 plus another $100 to register, and that is about a weeks (net) pay for me. Add in another $45/month for insurance and all I really have to do is buy gas (another $40/week or so)

I admit that I buy myself a few toys here and there, but my wife and I are in a more secure position than we were at this time last year. However, I still have the PS2 I got for Christmas when they first came out, and most of the movies I watch are rented from the library; box office prices border on sodomy! My wife knows how to cook well enough for us to eat nicely with inexpensive ingredients, and we shop around for the best deal on those.

People do bear some responsibility for their actions, but I see no reason why someone who does all the right things should fall through the cracks. We don’t need to micromanage people either, at least not if they are educated enough to have even basic life skills. That means better schooling and competent parenting.
Part of the reason I manage to have enough money for gas is because I am good enough at math to know that if I barely have rent money and I spend $X on this or that, that means that I won’t have enough to pay rent. Sadly, many people lack even that basic level of mathematical aptitude. Sure, calculus is hard, but subtraction is not.
I also had a mother teach me how to do price comparisons when I was young. I tend to look at the $/pound more than the total price when I go shopping. Simple skill that you won’t often learn in school (especially if, like me, you never take Home Ec.) but that means having an actual parent around too.

You can’t put the responsibility squarely one the individual’s shoulders, nor can you expect the government to step in and take care of you. It’s a shared thing. Of course, the government is supposed to make sure we aren’t totally stupid either; after all, they take taxes from us to pay for schools. If they want to make us responsible for our own education then they should cut our taxes!

I understand @jerv Someone who is poor should never have anything nice. They should shop at Goodwill, they should live on Ramen and they should never have anything nicer than you! But will even that really make you happy?

Real Americans don’t get poor, @galileogirl.

Now I will take exception at that! My family arrived in 1634 and lived the history of America. I doubt if you have that extensive a pedigree. There was a time in my life when my minimum wage job disappeared in a recession and I was a single mother living on $140/mo unemployment and $75/mo child support, my $50 car out of comission and $130/mo rent due with no jobs in the suburbs for 3 mos. Now THAT’S poor! After living close the edge for another 4 years, I took the opportunity to go to college. So for 3 years I walked evertwhere, carried 20+ credits, and didn’t buy a piece of clothing the entire time. When you are repairing your underwea with a needle and thread for 3 years, you know you know you are poor.

During all the poverty, I still bought Time every week and took my daughter to the mall for lunch in the food court and a movie matinee on our birthdays. I know, how dare I blow govt provided work/study money on that!

@galileogirl Anything beyond luxuries must be earned. If that means a poor person sacrificing a little now and saving up for something nice (pretty much how I got my laptop computer) then that is fine, but that isn’t always what happens. All too often, I’ve seen people overextend themselves and cause their own pain, and I’ve seen people abuse the system, and those people make life hard on those that are legitimately trying to stay afloat since they get lumped in with the scammers and the financially inept.
My wife and I have been known to hit the thrift shops and eat the Ramen when times are tough, like the 14 months I was unemployed in a market that wasn’t hiring. Part of that has to do with the fact that we do not feel entitled to flatscreen TVs the way some people feel they are. Anything nice we have was saved for, and our major luxury purchases are infrequent.

“Always” will never be a reasonable standard. People are much happier if they aren’t worrying about how strangers live and mind their own business. If you really need to know the truth beyond casual conjecture, you can either read up on the subject of poverty in America or volunteer to work with the poor. I am sure that will put your mind at ease.

@escapedone7 i am very touched reading your reply.
i can only wish there are more people, compassionate human beings like you,
if there are even only 50 of them in one state (or city), then i totally believe that “humanity” will be more positive, enabling, and even passing down more positive energy, than if there’re ZERO person like you!

although I’m a guy myself, my heart is often so sensitive to issues & “injustices” problems like this, that I can literally feel some sort of pain in my chest just thinking about ‘em & the ‘cruelty’ of life these our “brothers & sisters” in our small tiny blue planet doesn’t deserve..

it is my biggest hope that I can start being strong, passionate, like you,
and keep sharing the “Light” in the darkness,
....so people, our fellow human beings will know that, indeed, there ARE still values of REAL humanity alive in our era, & even better, it’s increasing in making the world a better place!

thank you for sharing ur story.
I am honestly very touched by ur kindness spirit & deeds!
pls keep doing what you’re doing, you’re one of those lights in the darkness, enabling the “dark” to become another “light” and passing down the light, and creating even more lights in this world!

do i want to be out of the house 11 hours a day, toiling at a decent paying job and then see my taxes go way up for some new program to educate the poor or whatever is the next thing politicians are planning? no. i will never achieve much financially if that should happen. i am sympathetic to people’s plights but i am struggling to support my family (my daughter’s father is deceased so i have no choice) and i am in an income bracket that is described as “being caught in the middle.”

@jca It shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of those just above poverty themselves to support the poor. Those making $500,000 a year and more (mind you, that is after deductins, nand they get taxes at the lower rate on the first half million anyway) can pick up the slack and still live like kings and queens. THat is how it should be done. Ultimately, it is in the interest of the wealthy business owners as well as the poor to wipe out poverty and poor education, and to have a vibrant middle class full of well-healed consumers to power the economy.

Wealth is a right and an obligation.

I believe society as a whole has a responsibility to ensure everyone has a minimum standard of living.

Oprah, she has enough money for all of us.

“Wealth is a right and an obligation.”

In a perfect world. ;-)

@ChazMaz – We’re getting there. Be patient );-

The ritch get ritcher and the poor get poorer!

“To whom much has been given, much is required.”

Actually @ChazMaz it should be the goal.

My nightly prayer is to be so unfortunate as to move up into the top tax bracket and have to pay a million bucks a year. I hereby offer this promise to all employers out there. If you put me in that position, I will not condemn you for it. I will be eternally grateful and file those taxes with glee.

@mattbrowne “We’re getting there.”
Yeah, but there seems to be one nation that is holding out on being perfect. They figure that they got the “World’s Best…” status in a few areas so that entitles them to be jack-offs in many others.

@jerv – Let’s not forget 15-hour workdays of kids in the coal mines just 2 centuries ago. We tend to take things that changed for the better for granted and focus on the setbacks. I’m also worried about the widening wealth gap.

@mattbrowne True, but there are also areas where we think we have become better when in fact we’ve taken a few steps backwards. However, going into detail on that would be a major digression.
It’s funny in a scary way how it seems that many people see nothing wrong with a CEO “earning” 2000 (two thousand) times what the average employee of their company earns when a mere fifty years ago that figure was closer to 50:1 at worst. It was a major scandal when a baseball player finally earned more than the President of the US, yet nowadays minimum wage for a major league player is about five times the median income in this country.
It’s also a crock that some people cite average incomes to show how well we are doing here. Figure, take one millionaire and nine homeless, jobless people with zero income. That is an average income of $100K; not too shabby, even though 90% of that sample are living on the streets and eating out of dumpsters. Math can distort reality and give it a good PR spin, and our bread-and-circuses society eats it up since the truth requires fmore thinking than listening to your news network of choice.

@jerv you have a knack for detecting bullshit & penetrate through it to reveal the Truth!
you should definitely do something about ur clever & vast knowledge.
“someone out there is waiting for you to work out your potential”
start blogging, join the political campaign, basically, just start raising people’s awareness in ANY way you can!
it might probably means a little,...but in life, you often never know what’s going to happen when you start unleashing out your energy/potential & share it to the world.
some surprising, unexpected things could have happened!
and there’re probably people who’re on the same page with you, just waiting for SOMEBODY to start the “snowball” effect!

@jerv – Yes, there are exceptions and CEO salaries and bonuses are a good example.

What I find odd is that people think that the rich are taxed enough since (according to some) the top 10% pay ~40% of the taxes. What those people overlook is that that same 10% often pays less tax as a percentage of their income than a low-income person such as myself.
The standard deduction nearly wipes out my wife’s income, meaning that by the time all is said and done, we pay around 10% of our gross household income in taxes. Warren Buffet pays closer to 15% while his middle-class secretary and my parents (in the low six-figure range) pay closer to 30–35% of their gross income in taxes.
When you stop looking at raw dollar amounts and calculate the percentages, you can quickly debunk many who complain that the rich already pay enough.
Hell, if we taxed them at closer to 40% then maybe we could lower the taxes on businesses, making it more profitable to keep their companies (and thus, jobs) in the US rather than hand out huge bonuses to the CEOs while leaving the people who actually do the work with little/nothing. Just think of what these companies could do with a few hundred million extra dollars in their coffers! More R&D, better benefits for their workers, more modern equipment, expand the company to create more jobs… basically more good than giving the $$$$$$$$$$$ to an individual could do. I’m sure that Microsoft and Apple have hired more people than Gates or Jobs (personally) ever did.

@jerv What the Tax Protesters (at least those who aren’t rich) do not understand is that while it is true that the rich pay a large share of the taxes, they also earn a very large share of the money. The top 0.1% of tax payers (that’s the top 10% of the top 1%) pay 12% of all federal taxes. Their average tax is $7.4 million dollars. Unfair? I hardly think so, because they get to keep most of what they earn. Most pay a total tax rate considerably less than the average working stiff because there are so many loopholes available to them.

What that means is that while real income is down over the past decade for the middle class and poor, it is up for the very top. And they are accumulating wealth at a rapid pace, allowing them to buy up ownership of ever more tings to make them more money. Since their Republican proxies killed the estate tax, this leads to dynastic wealth and ownership shifting to an oligarchy. We must cancel Bush’s ill-advised tax cuts for the rich or end up a banana republic awash in massive debt the rich will just leave for us to pay. Their investments are already increasingly offshore.

@ETpro Like I often point out, they may pay 40% of the taxes but they have 90% of the money. With Capital Gains tax as low as it is and many of the uber-rich earning their money that way as opposed to actual income, it’s safe to say that we actually have a regressive tax system, at least once you exceed the income that any reasonable individual can even spend on their own.
Some of those people take that money and start/buy/expand their companies, but that is far from universal. It happens just often enough for some people to come up with some bullshit about trickle-down economics while forgetting that it’s companies, not people, that create jobs and pay workers.

BTW, I got the wrong number; Warren Buffet paid just under 18%, mostly due to the low Capital Gains tax, while his secretary paid 30% since her income was actual wages/salary. In other words, earning money means you’ll lose it, but having money roll in unearned is what actually makes wealth.
Sad to think that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have done more for providing healthcare to the poor than the US government though :(

Actually, in that light, maybe we should just give all of the money in the US to a small handful of people. Let them run the show without having to go through the trouble of lobbying Congressmen or anything. Just hand the country and our wallets to the rich. Not all of them are selfish bastards :P