Class warfare summed up in a simple joke (with an accompanying cartoon)

A "mindset" does not solve the budget shortfall in Wisconsin.

Let's go one step further. Even if at a federal level everyone making over $250,000 paid an additional $4000 it still would not solve Wisconsin's shortfall

 

Your business posts are very informative, often brilliant, but you really have trouble staying on point. The choice here is who can and should pay the extra $4,000 -- that "shared sacrifice" we hear so much about these days. Obviously you believe taking $4,000 away from a teacher is more beneficial than taking $4,000 away from somebody making $350,000. That's really the choice here, after all, who can and should make it work with less.

And also, there are a lot more Jimmy Dolan types out there on a smaller scale. Most people like to give themselves more credit for their station in life than they deserve -- the old "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" line.

 

Sorry YF, but I don't agree with "Most of us could become lawyers or work on Wall Street."

Everyone has their own unique abilities. I could decide tomorrow that I want to become a doctor. Guess what? It ain't gonna happen. I was horrible in science when I was in school, in spite of constant studying. It was my weakest subject. It's like that Jimmy Dugan line: "It's hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it."

And I don't get upset when people make more money ... if they earn it. Yourself, for example, have found a career that most of us wouldn't even think of, and have become very successful with it. And if I remember right, you have an employee, who you pay pretty well. I don't resent you. Heck, I wish I could find a great career that I could make a lot of money and enjoy at the same time. But I can barely screw in a lightbulb. However, I can write a 400-word story in 10 minutes that makes sense and will be seen by thousands of people. That's the abilities that I have.

What I resent, is when people make money at the expense of others. I've ranted on here before about CEOs. I wouldn't begrudge a CEO his bonus if he's making money for the company, and his workers are making good livings too. What I do begrudge the CEO is when he makes money by cutting jobs, coming up with lousy ideas that make the company go on the brink of going out of business, and then running away with their million-dollar golden parachutes.

And some of us make our decisions because, if we don't, we'll never be able to do anything in life. Such as buying a house. My wife and I bought our house before the bubble for slightly over $100K. It took nearly all of our meager savings, but we did it. It scared us to death. But if we had waited, our house would have gone up to $200K during the bubble, and is worth about $170K today. We wouldn't have been able to afford that. And I'm sure, a lot of people who have now been foreclosed thought the same way. They saw housing prices going up, figured they better get in before they couldn't afford it, and ended up losing their homes. You can say they made a bad decision, and some of them did (Wal-Mart workers buying $300K homes, for instance). But a lot of them, I'm sure, felt like they had no choice.

You can say the same thing about having kids. Yeah, they're a ton of work, and money. Guess what, though. If the majority of us waited to have kids until we can afford them, we'd never have them. Because a lot of people out there are barely breaking even.

 

No it wouldn't, and if you looked at my posts on the now-locked Wisconsin thread you would see that I, like most others, recognize the need to trim salaries. To do this while at the same time making it priority No. 1 to protect the super-rich from giving up another 1 percent of their salary shows an absence of morals that, personally, I can't comprehend.

 

The state of Wisconsin didn't go broke because they spent too much money providing services to people making over $250,000.

They went broke by doling out contracts to public sector employees that they couldn't afford.

When looking for a solution to this problem, shouldn't we start with the problem that caused it?

 

The state of Wisconsin went broke because they refused to have their revenues match their expenses. Going forward, expenses are only half of that equation.

 

You are trying to connect two issues that do not connect.

If you want to discuss high incomers giving to charity as a moral issue you have a case but paying higher taxes is not a moral issue.

 

It is a moral issue when the same people rail against the government taking $3,000 of their $300,000 and then rail against the government not taking $3,000 of someone else's $48,000. It shows an incredible lack of empathy and a poor sense of fairness, which are two moral traits.

 

When I worked at City Hall in New York City in 2000, the budget was around $33B. It's now $67.5B and the deficit is $2.4B.

So, obviously the revenues have risen, but the spending has out raced the revenue.

Without knowing the specifics of Wisconsin, I would bet it's a pretty similar situation.

 

I think there's some morality in the 10th Commandment.

 

In an era when taxes weren't seen as the devil's work, perhaps they could afford those benefits. Just as in Scott Walker's current budget, this year's deficit wouldn't be nearly so large if not for tax breaks. As Rick said, expenses and revenues.

In the larger sense of what the cartoon and the joke were saying to start the thread, it is that rich people don't want to share the sacrifices that they are asking everyone else to share. I don't see how you can possibly argue with that premise.

 

Leave my wife out of this.