Student Riots In England

[Kalalau]

Students rioted in London again today, setting some fires and roughing up Prince Charles & Camilla's car. Shouts of "Off with their heads!" could be heard. I think the students are 100% right to be doing this. Conservatives in England and Republicans here have pushed the idea that rich people do not need to pay taxes and both countries economies are disintegrating because of it. Look at any violent revolution there has ever been and its been because of abuses by the privileged elite, who felt that they just didn't need to pay taxes and had the political power to enforce that desire. Here, the super rich privileged elite own radio, television, newspapers, and the Republican Party, they routinely con the middle class into voting for its own destruction. In England, students are taking to the streets. I very much hope that their violence and the shouts of "Off with their heads" awakens in the super wealthy privileged elite memories of the French, Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions, that they reassess and understand that paying their taxes to keep their societies afloat is a much cheaper price to pay than being led before a firing squad some day. Oh how the wealthy Chinese, Russian, French, Cuban, etc, elite must have wished for just one more chance to do it right as they were led to mass executions. "Oh, we must raise student fees to prices they can't afford because we don't tax our wealthy elite", the conservative, Conservative, Republican, eternal elitist motto, and it often ends before a firing squad. Those who do not know history, etc...

[escondido100]

Re: Student Riots In England

What's the big deal you Brits? Get on a plane, fly to Ciudad Jaurez, sneak across our border, then go to college for FREE! "We" won't care - "we" never have! You can enjoy any of our government services and public schools at your leisure and you won't be charged a single pound!

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Student Riots In England

can you imagine shoppers demanding lower prices at the malls and setting fires to all the stores?

[Walkoff Balk]

Re: Student Riots In England

They have to pay for the upcoming royal wedding.

[Kalalau]

Re: Student Riots In England

Aah yes, rioting at the malls. The other day it occurred to me how ridiculous it would be if, in a store, the shoppers could vote to determine what the prices should be. Is it any different from voters determining what their taxes should be? Why or why not? Things cost what they cost. A pound of hamburger has costs in it, the farmer, the feed, the processor, the trucker, the retailer and employees along the way. A police officer has costs in him, his training, equipment, his salary and pension. In one case its obviously ridiculous to vote on what you will pay in a store, yet the other its deemed perfectly reasonable for voters to decide on revenue for the state or city that means that sewers will overflow, schools will close, cholera and diphtheria will run rampant. What is the difference, really? You can chose not to buy the hamburger if you don't like the price, but if you don't support the city and the state and the country with your taxes (especially if you give the rich exemption like the guillotined French elite, or machine gunned Chinese and Russian elites used to get) you will surely be drinking diphtheria laced water sooner or later. David Stockman himself said it was time to get over this holy grail of cutting taxes. No, they are not pleasant. Neither is paying over $3.00 for a gallon of gas, but you don't get to vote on that. Tax the rich, they can afford it, its good for them.

[escondido100]

Re: Student Riots In England

2% of the population are considered rich. that is 600,000 people making over a million a year. they pay about 35% of the taxes collected.if you raise the tax rate as would happen under the obama tax hike, you would take 10% of this current income stream out of the US economy. do you trust the Govt to spend it wisely or will th eearners of this income do a better job.
they have already proven themselves by creating wealth from investment, hard work and capitalization of ideas and buisinesses. what has the govt done to foster confidence in their ability to use our tax dollars wisely?

[Kalalau]

Re: Student Riots In England

At present tax rates on the rich, the society is falling apart, only 4 % lower than under Clinton when the whole national debt was on the way to being paid off. Bridges are falling down. Schools are closing, teachers being fired, the whole key to personal advancement and prosperity as a nation is education. We fall farther and farther behind China every day, more in debt to them every day. What do the super wealthy do with their money? They "invest" it, meaning they buy Wall St. "securities". And every few years these evaporate. Might as well bet it at the track, really. Or they buy yachts made in Norway, champaign made in France, caviar from Russia or Iran, luxury cars made in Italy or England, and behold, when they do create jobs, its in India so they can save on labor. True, some of them have created wealth, but what about the trust fund babies. Nothing against them, and I do think it would be very nice, if I could, to leave $500 million or so to my children, we'd all like to do that. But if you are talking about Walmart heirs, the Dupont heirs, the Rockefeller heirs, etc the inheritances run into tens of billions. Do you really want royalty here? A class of wealthy people permanently protected from paying taxes to keep this society functioning? Do they really want to end up in front of a Maoist or Leninist firing squad? No. Tax them. America is meant to be a land of opportunity. It functioned best when tax rates were astronomically higher, like 91% on the highest marginal rates under Eisenhower--back when America pretty much ruled the world, when its economy was unassailable, when we could afford to educate our children in great universities for free, when we could afford to go to the moon, when the average working citizen could afford a house, college education for the kids, medical care, and a comfortable retirement. Tax the rich. Every day they are not lined up in front of a firing squad they should be thankful . By the same token every economic basket case there has ever been in the history of the world has happened because the rich sit on their wealth, wealth does not circulate, it does not buy useful things the society needs (clean water, medicine, education, good roads, etc) but instead finances fatuous speculation. The dutch tulip bulb bubble for example, the Florida land bubble for example, stock prices leading up to 1929, gasoline futures a few years ago, some say gold today is way over priced by speculation. If you had to make a choice where $1 million would be better spent, between buying tulip bulb futures and keeping standing a bridge between two cities like, for example, Minneapolis and St. Paul, which is the obvious choice? The paradox is that by taxing the rich to pay to keep those bridges standing and those schools open, the wealth of the rich actually does increase, because they end up with more customers with more disposable income.

[Kalalau]

Re: Student Riots In England

And some people who earn the most money are Wall St. hedge fund managers. What exactly is their contribution to the national well being? Some of them are earning well over a billion dollars a year. What is it that they produce? Not cars, not oil, not clever inventions, not computer programs...its just speculation. What a perfect person to tax! How about divorce attorneys? Show me a physical product they produce or some good they do to society, some needed service. And granted, people do need divorces from time to time, people do like to speculate in markets, but if these professions are rewarded with tens of millions in profits, what is so horrible in taxing them @ a marginal rate 39% instead of 35%? At 39% you have a decent chance of paying down the debt (it was happening under President Clinton), maybe even paying it off if two stupid wars are ended, at 35 % your whole economy is tanking, hopelessly in debt to Communist China. What a totally clear choice.

[escondido100]

Re: Student Riots In England

clear to you maybe but you would be in the minority on this one.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145109/Am...ompromise.aspx

66% percent of our fellow americans tend to believe that obamas tax hike would be bad for the recovering economy.

[Kaonohi]

Re: Student Riots In England

And how long will it be until we in America start rioting? Protesting:

1. Our diminishing civil rights,
2. Our broken and collapsing tax structure,
3. Our limited educational opportunities for the poor and minorities,
4. Our shameful treatment of the veterans who once pledged their bodies
and lives to maintain 'our' way of life,
5. Our clueless leadership.*

Maybe not too long; we are overdue.

EXCEPT!!!! We are kept in thrall by a government that is doing its best to convince us that were it not for them and their expensive wars that we would be subject to slavery by Islamic extremist terrorists.

I'm beginning to understand those stickers on highway signs that proclaim:

9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB

Perhaps....

[Kalalau]

Re: Student Riots In England

When we think about speculative booms the mortgage meltdown should come to mind. Wall St. sharpies invented "securities" not worth the paper they were printed on, and when it all fell apart, the precious rich were too important to fail, they got bailed out by you, the taxpayer because they count. The wage earning taxpayer who paid to bail out the billionaires, however, can be left to starve in the streets when their unemployment insurance expires. (note the word insurance, it is self financing by deductions, it is not and never has been a giveaway like the bailout of the billionaires was). Also to note, the bailout of billionaires was begun under their president bush whose administration deliberately deregulated Wall St. just so the hot shot campaign contributors of Wall St. could pull just such schemes. Why else to deregulate it? I'd prefer to not see the firing squads, actually, I just want the gvt. to take their ill gotten money away. Legitimate earnings, no problem at all. But the ill gotten gains-- by all means get all of it back. Preferably no firing squads, but if laws were broken the criminals need to go away for as long as the law permits.

[escondido100]

Re: Student Riots In England

http://americaswatchtower.com/2008/0...e-mae-failure/

i think you have been drinking the koolaid for to long.
the media doesnt really report that their f(r)iends in congress have mucked this up. but they have done a great job of misplacing blame.
there is enough to go around for everybody.

[Menehune Man]

Re: Student Riots In England

Yes... we were never promised a rose garden or that life would be fair,
but when government or individual(corporate) greed becomes evil to the extent of actually harming society as a whole, people will eventually fight back.

Gutting funds out of public health/education/welfare/unemployment/disability/social security/etc... while allowing unfair tax cuts and incredible loopholes to those that have enough money to take advantage of them is going to cause revolutions in the 'developed' countries of Europe and America.

At least that's what I believe is on the horizon.

[Ron Whitfield]

Re: Student Riots In England

2% of the population are considered rich. They have already proven themselves by creating wealth from investment, hard work and capitalization of ideas and buisinesses.

Proven themselves during the last say 3 decades in the most minimal of ways compared to where we should be in the year 2010, having barely avoided Bush's greater depression (thank you, Obama) and still teetering on the edge of economic collapse of the kind never seen before thanx to unbridled greed and political folly, legal and otherwise, primarily from so-called conservatives. If that's the American Way, then flush it, twice to make sure.

66% percent of our fellow americans tend to believe that obamas tax hike would be bad for the recovering economy.

80% feel the rich should be doing better for America with their $.

[Kalalau]

Re: Student Riots In England

The most responsible thing to do would be to hire an army of accountants to hunt down the money and just take it back. Its almost like physics where matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed, money exists, its only a question of who has it, and if criminal conspiracies have it, if it has been taken under false pretenses, it should be taken back.