patrick.net

HousingWatcher says

Apparently Ray supports wealth re-distribution just like liberal Democrats do, except that he wants wealth re-distribution in the opposite direction… from the bottom to the top.

TBH, neither the dems nor the republicans really understand anything. We might as well call them Blue Team and Red Team for all the real-world signficance they have.

The Red Team rightfully fears that the US will make the mistakes of Greece, Spain, and the other socialist economies of Southern Europe. These economies over-promised benefits to all and under-taxed to provide it, and now all of them are screwed.

What the Red Team steadfastly eliminate from their understanding, though, is that there is a Northern Europe tier of states that actually did establish this high-tax / high-service economy, and these demonstrably work well.

The bottom line, of course, is that if you're rich you want to keep your loot and not actually pay the progressive tax burden that the rich of the Nordic countries shoulder.

So they argue for cutting back the socialism we have now, to defend their own economic interests.

Technically, we could actually raise taxes on everyone, not just the rich like the Blue Team wants -- "widening the base" as it were. What would happen over time, I think, is all these extra taxes would just come out of rents and land values, which is why I'm a tax proponent.

Raise payroll taxes to FULLY cover people's health and pensions, like they do up in Communist Canada. Raise taxes across the board to pay for the national security state (the top 20% of this country make over half of the income, so they'll be on the hook for most of it anyway).

I think we'd see rents and home price fall dollar for dollar. Win win!

Well, in honor of Mother's Day, I'll share my story. I realize this is adecdotal and maybe some of the suggestions in this thread that statistics show welfare doesn't work might be connected to information with which I'd agree. Still, I was born to a teenage mother who, at the time, was a waitress at Pizza Hut. After a divorce with my father, she struggled. Her struggles resulted in a personal bankruptcy even though by that point she'd worked her way up to a supervisor position at a bank. She moved my sister and me to a small town where she began to waitress at a truck stop. I've not asked about many of the details, but now that I know how people sometimes struggle through their twenties, especially as a single parent, I figure she was just finding the weight of her responsibilities difficult.

Around this time, I remember our family beginning to use food stamps. We ate very simply. My mom developed strong habits around using coupons and buying sales. From what I remember, we only used food stamps for a short time as my mother once again worked into a job as an assistant to a small CPA firm.

Her example and responsibility eventually(there's much more to the story), led to me being the first in my immediate family to start and finish a Bachelor's Degree after high school. My sister would do the same. My mom and dad also both went back to school and got Bachelor Degrees.

Now I realize it might take someone like my mom, to whom, of course, I think few compare, but just wanted to relate a success story for welfare as they don't often come up in discussions like this one.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

>Raise payroll taxes to FULLY cover people’s health and pensions, like they do up in *Communist Canada*.

LoL! I know many Americans think like this...