All good points Steve. I was immediatly struck by how she thought the stock market bouncing back only benefits the "rich".

My 401(k) is doing fairly well (at least it's made the money back that was lost the last couple of years), so it seems to be helping the working class too.

Oh, that's right, I'm one of the "rich" people. I assume that since I actually EARN a wage that I am classified as rich - so I must not deserve it

Did you say "Tucker" or "McKinney"?

Cynthia Tucker. She is a columnist for the AJC.

Okay, I'll admit it. I largely exited the market before the crash, but I stayed with Microsoft and QQQ, even bought more when it seemed to bottom out, and my wife's 401K is looking great. She is grateful that I encouraged her to invest the max 18%.

But come on, we all know stockmarket rises have nothing to do with creating jobs. In fact it seems it is just the opposite. The stock market is going up because we now produce more with fewer workers. I'm not bemoaning, just making an observation. Also this big tax break for the very wealthy was nearly as unconscionable when we had a projected surplus. However now that it seems we will be pumping billions into the industrial military complex for the forseeable future. That spending alone may, if we don't over do it, pull us out of this, perhaps, pending economic disaster.

But let's be perfectly clear that we are not borrowing from our own banks or the money printed by fiat from the Feds... We are borrowing based on the large investments in our treasury from China and Japan. That borrowing is on the hope that our decisions
will be done for good financial reasons and not for some ideology that may have no real merit.
Even now the IMF, which admittedly I'm not really to crazy about, has warned the U. S. of continuing along the bad fiscal responsibility of giving back money which must be borrowed.

Let's not add to it by continuing with what seems to me to be the irrational idea of sinking the U. S. trillions of dollars into more debt and giving most of it to our top earners. If this must be done, let's at least wait for the money that will surely flow back into our economy via the massive spending now going on in Irag and other places.

The government isn't giving the wealthy anything. The wealthy are simply not being forced (at the point of a gun, I might add) to give as much to the government as they used to.

I don't see where letting citizens keep more of the money they earn is harmful, regardless of whether or not the citizen is rich or poor. All American taxpayers are overtaxed.

If you are worried about the deficit/surplus situation, get Congress and President Bush to quit spending so much money.

It seems to me that realistically there is always a price for doing business. In an ideal world where that price doesn't exist, I'd agree with you. Yet the very rich are paid extremely well for doing business in the U.S.

Sure, maybe in the process of doing business a few inadvertantly also make other enormous contributions. Yet they all also have many delicious tax loop holes that most of us in lower, middle and upper middle class just do not have. They also have enormous wealth and beautiful toys, such a private jets, etc., stuff that most of us are unable to imagine.

Hey, I'm not knocking it, but come on, the country is in a jam. Such enormous tax reversals at this time, rather than giving them more money, may even result in the very wealthy having to give up that spare Rolls, etc. But on that level it's no big deal one way or the other.

On the other hand it may put millions more on welfare rolls. Millions, maybe even some of the very bright people who respond to your witty digs, who depend on the workforce and don't have enough capital to see them though, could see their jobs gone forever.

So I admantly say, let the very rich make a small sacrifice that is absolutely nothing compared to the grunts and our working class who were conned by fear to go into Iraq.

Our grunts are putting their lives on the line in Iraq... and some are paying an awful price. They don't make policy. Theirs is not to reason why, theirs is but to do and die.

And, if you truly believe in a user fee, as I do, maybe the very rich who lusted for the Iraqi war and maybe invested heavily into the military industrial complex as the Kennedy's did during the war in Vietnam, should pay even more. It seems their insightful investments in George W. and his advisors as well as those who manufacture war supplies may give them even more enormous pay offs.

I can see that last paragraph may offend you. But rest assured, I really don't want to raise taxes, mine included. However I repeat, let's get back to fiscal responsibility before we experiment with the ideals of admittedly sharply honest, but sometimes overly idealistic Libertarians. I enjoyed Ayn Rand too, but like Plato's Republic, Atlas Shrugged is still just an ideal.

"It seems to me that realistically there is always a price for doing business."
True. But when you set the price of business too high, investors and entrepreneurs decide not to go into business at all. That means less jobs for all those "bright people who respond to [my] witty digs".

"the very wealthy having to give up that spare Rolls, etc."
That is pure class warfare. Someone has to build that Rolls Royce. (And ship it, sell it, service it, etc.) Literally thousands of jobs depend on that Rolls being sold.

It isn't the right of any government agency to decide who needs your money more, and then use police power to it and give it to someone else. That is called stealing.

If you're walking down the street and a bum (homeless person, urban outdoorsman, whatever you want to call him) uses a knife to liberate your wallet, he's committed armed robbery. For some reason, when the government does it, people call it "providing for the general welfare."

In my book, stealing is stealing, no matter who is doing the dirty work.

>when you set the price of business too high, investors and entrepreneurs decide not to go into business at allSomeone has to build that Rolls Royce. (And ship it, sell it, service it, etc.) Literally thousands of jobs depend on that Rolls being sold.It isn't the right of any government agency to decide who needs your money more, and then use police power to it and give it to someone else. That is called stealing. In my book, stealing is stealing, no matter who is doing the dirty work.<

I agree. Let's work together to get `em out of office, then knock 3/4's of those offices down. But since sharp edged personal honesty is attempted by a very few, it will be years before anything based upon those ideals will be a fact of our lives.

For the most part, our government doesn't tax those it services. It taxes the rich and services the poor. It robs Peter to pay Paul, and can thus always count on the support of Paul.

There is no such thing as a tax loophole. There are tax laws, and all people should obey them. It is not anyone's civic duty to pay as much income tax as possible. I wholeheartedly support anyone who can get out of paying any tax, whether they be rich, poor, or whatever. However, when it comes to setting tax policy, those that pay the most should also be cut the most.

>It robs Peter to pay Paul, and can thus always count on the support of Paul.grin< surprised the hell out of me. ) it's obvious we hold radically different views in this area.

My ideal Arcadia would be a world without government, where we each are born as
caring productive individuals whose decisions are never made at the expense of others. In that world we are still individuals but we have no so-called leaders.

Sure, if necessary, we may, like the Minute Men, take up arms in mutual protection.
We may even pay a few to be ever on duty, such as people to maintain our larger weapons of self defense and other services which we would somehow define over something like the net. (umm, would we need police? ) I haven't worked out the details such as how do we pay them? Do we just do it on the honor system?
But you get my drift, and you also know that we humans are no where near that level of consciousness.
I suspect that even in the Neaderthal tribes it took a strong leader who forced the others to share the hunt with some of the weaker members. Like the Wolf, humans came from packs which we called tribes. Those pacts have always had Alpha males and females who were the leaders. It seems we still have a very thin veneer: that we are still psychologically geared
to look for patterns even when they don't exist;
still unwilling to make our own decisions and still have a need of strong leaders to tell us what to think.

Those leaders more often than not come from the rich. The ultra rich are too smart for that. They, more often than not, merely pull the strings. In the U.S. those strings are lobbies and the media.
We both know that it doesn't matter if we come to terms on any of this. What matters is did it allow us to, through introspection, to
strenghten our personal honesty so that we may view the world in a more clearer light.

It was not a waste of time for me

It seems that may also be somewhat the Ideal of many Libertarians.

For me these exchanges is not about getting you to revise your views. They are nothing more than a tool which enables me to sharpen my own introspection.

If they are successful then it's a two way street. If not, then so what? It worked for me.

Sorry about the mess at the end of that last message. But I suppose it's obvious to anyone who may have read a response from me, I'm an extremely poor editor.