1) If you tax people, as seen in my example, do you honestly think they are going to sit there and allow the government to do that? What will the fall out be? By some of the comments I’m seeing, you honestly seem to think taxes will get the country moving in a positive direction again. Man this is scary, that rate of taxation will cause most of those people to head for the hills and horde their money. What do you think will happen to the jobs those people create?

An absolute fact: The government does not make wealth be it for the guy making $30k, or the guy making $300k. The government only takes wealth, that’s all it can do

Dakine01: That is a tax write-off for him. What I meant was him writing that extra little check the uncle sam. I can bet that he has never, or will never do that.

He assumed the Presidency after William McKinley is shot by an assasin, at a time when anarchist attacks and communist and socialist protests and recruitment were increasing. The fear was that the economic system was rapidly becoming fractionalized and stagnant, especially for the poor laboring working classes. This could lead to revolution without reform. Thus the “progressives” who actually emerged out of several different parties began to take on the corrupt leadership. Roosevelt was one that represented the Republican party.

Almost immediately after taking office Roosevelt invoked the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against the
Northern Securities Company. He encouraged Congress to pass the Expedition Act to facilitate antitrust prosecution. Beef and Oil Trusts were dismantled. Standard Oil indicted on antitrust charges. Hepburn Rate Act
A Department of Commerce was created to regulate foreign trade. He created the term “muckraker” to refer to those writers who brought forth social ills and then acted to alleviate the issues exposed by them. After Upton Sinclair published The Jungle Roosevelt advocated passage of the Food and Drugs Act and Meat Inspection Act.
He fostered the first workers protection laws-Employer’s Liability Act. He wrote “Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood”, the precursor for national legislation protecting women’s labor rights and proscribing child labor. An advocate throughout his presidency of the progressive income tax resulted in the 16th Amendment, previously declared Unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Roosevelt saw that labor unrest could only be resolved by negotiations between representative unions and management. He compelled the settlement of a crippling coal strike, not be federalizing troops…but by forcing the parties into a collective bargaining session. The Roosevelt Foundation for Industrial Peace was created.

TR sent Victor Metcalf, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, to California to diffuse the racial tension prompted by the San Francisco School Board’s decision to segregate Japanese students…negotiating with leaders on both sides. And after decades of racist immigration laws, he instituted the Basic Naturalization Act enacted into law framing the rules for naturalization in effect today. This resulted in a massive in-pouring of new immigrants, and their eventual naturalization as citizens…648,743 in 1902 and more than 800,000 in 1903.

TR was an environmentalist and conservationist. He signed the U.S. Antiquities Act which protects not only Native American sites from destruction, but also protects artifacts. Rather than seeing lands as acreage to be exploited for commercial gain he created the National Parks, and National Forestry Departments. He created dozens of national parks and monuments such as Crater Lake NP, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Wind Cave, Sully Hill Grand Canyon, Platt, Mesa, Devil’s Tower, El Morro NM, Chaco Canyon NM, Petrified Forest NM, Montezuma Castle NM, Cinder Cone NM, Lassen Peak NM, Gila Cliff NM, Tonto NM, the Pinnacles NM, Jewel Cave NM, Natural Bridges NM, Lewis & Clark Cavern NM, Tumacacori NM, Wheeler NM, and Mount Olympus NM.

TR won a Nobel Prize for his efforts in negotiating peaceful resolutions to several world conflicts, and engaged in diplomacy with several “enemies” of the United States (including Muslim “terrorists”), while at the same time enunciating strongly the positions of the United States. While not an isolationist by any means (he was more than willing to intervene in other nations in a number of occasions), he did have tangible programs to attempt to extricate the US from Cuba and the Philippines after the US occupied them.

He believed that the use of public expenditures for what he believed the common good. His support for the Panama Canal was the “Space Program” of its time: a massive use of tax-money and bonds to build a colossal technological leviathan. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before.

So TR was quite a “regulator”, “taxer”, environmentalist, and believed in the use Federal power (rather than the private sector) to undertake massive social projects. He was pro-union. Pro-woman. Pro-education.

John McCain…you are no TR!

Ok guys, if socialism and/or ‘Progressive tax’ is the best way to get America prosperous again, why not really get progressive and tax the super-rich at 80-90%? For example, say Bill Gates is worth 100 billion…tax him at 90% still leaves him with 10 Billion. What do you think the fall out from this will be?

I don’t like the idea of socialism. It’s too much power in the hands of a few who aren’t particularly great at running businesses.

I see the progressive tax as a necessity AT TIMES since the rich have taken so much of the country’s wealth and held down the working middle class and poor to the point where they simply can’t afford to pay more taxes. They’re on the edge of collapse as it is. That’s why Obama-Biden propose some tax cuts.

Whether 90% or 29.32% is better is merely an observation and calculation of the outcomes and not an ideological issue. All taxation redistributes wealth in one way or another. Blue states subsidize red states and I don’t hear Republicans complaining about that!

The fallout from a highly progressive tax system with a big high-end rate would depend upon whether it worked to get the country moving. It would be a lot less defensible if the economy worked better for everyone.

It’s been argued that for national defense we should spend about every penny in the country on bombs, airplanes, tanks and such. Would you not do the same if the country were about to implode financially? Wouldn’t our national security be in jeopardy the same way (presuming we had wolves at the door who might take advantage)?

BTW: to those of you that think your making a connection b/t Bush and socialism, I tend to agree with you. The bailout package was a horrible idea and probably will not work. It makes us conservatives sick that anything like this was even proposed by a ‘so-called’ republican.

I suppose you oppose to having a public fire department too.

If Republicans really believed in their own abilities to succeed without any public help they’d stay off the sidewalks & roads and never call the police or go to a library or attend public schools. Instead they’d move to the wilds of Alaska or somesuch and stay free of government and the oppression of help from other Americans. Nuts.

The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.

I’m thinking that this quote ought to be talking-point repeated relentlessly to our “base” until it begins to have an impact. Not for the purposes of class war, but rather just to remind us all that there is a damn good reason for progressive taxation. Can you say, “social cohesion”?

Ok guys, if socialism and/or ‘Progressive tax’ is the best way to get America prosperous again, why not really get progressive and tax the super-rich at 80-90%?

They did this during WWII. We’re in two wars. So I’d say why not?