The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: Freeper on April 21, 2012, 11:35:15 AM
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Alan Grayson
Thomas Jefferson on the Buffett Rule
I don't know what Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson would have thought about TV, cars, spaceships, cellphones, skyscrapers, computers or nuclear weapons. But I do know what Jefferson would have thought about the Buffett Rule. He would have liked it.
The Buffett Rule is the Obama Administration's proposal to adopt a 30% minimum tax rate on personal income above $1 million a year. It would promote one of the central tenets of progressivism: that the burden of taxes should fall on the rich, not the poor.
In 1811, two years after Jefferson left the Presidency, Jefferson wrote a letter to General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution. Jefferson said that he supported taxes (then tariffs, since there was no income tax yet) falling entirely on the wealthy. As Jefferson explained: "The farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of this country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings."
Here is someone else who was an outspoken proponent of progressive taxation: Adam Smith, who literally "wrote the book" on capitalism. In 1776, in The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
"The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."
(I wonder: When Adam Smith wrote about the "luxuries and vanities" of the rich, was he contemplating Mitt Romney's elevator for Romney's car? Or is that simply beyond contemplation?)
Two hundred years ago, when America was founded, progressive taxation was viewed as just common sense. We still have common sense, don't we?
First, let's see the Buffett Rule for individuals. Then the Buffett Rule for corporations. That would be progressive. And that would be progress.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/125131094
How about we just tax democrats?
Justice wanted
2. How sad the words and ideas of the founding fathers can get perverse by those who would twist it
to claim that the founding fathers wanted this to be a CHRISTIAN nation OR that the founding Fathers where interested in allowing the rich to get richer while the poor suffered.
Great find Mr. Grayson.
Why is it that in the riches country in the world one should have to struggle to pay bills and put food on the table. Why is it so wrong for "poor"/Working Class to want to be able to pay all the bills, put food on the table, save a few dollars AND still have the "luxury" of enjoying the chance to rent a movie or go out to dinner with the family or buy a book and not be called moochers?
If you want to mooch off of others then you are a moocher, so quit mooching then we won't call you one.
tk2kewl
4. we need few hundred more guys like Grayson in DC
We already have too many guys like Grayson in DC that is why we are in so much trouble.
rgbecker
5. If only the tea partiers could read history.
We read the Constitution and I will argue if the founders wanted socialism then the constitution would have been written as so. The founders didn't give us the income tax, that came much later.
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Two hundred years ago, when America was founded, progressive taxation was viewed as just common sense.
236 years ago we broke away from England because of something you've seem to forgotten...sir...ever hear the phrase "taxation without representation"?
I bet a look at your voting record would show you're familiar with it.
We still have common sense, don't we?
WE...the people...still do...the jury is out on you.
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WE...the people...still do...the jury is out on you.
The jury came in in November of 2010......which is why he's posting at the DUmp now, and not sitting in congress.....
doc
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I like the way moonbat Grayson uses that "Courage" at the end of his silly posts.
He plagiarized it from Dan Rather, who ended broadcasts that way for a while, years before he was shitcanned for his bogus story about W in the Air National Guard.
Rather was a leftist scumbag. Grayson will never rise to that level.
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Is Alan Grayson talking about the poor who own XBOXes and iPhones, have high speed Internet, drive newer cars, those poor?