"Evicted": Marina Won't Renew Contract for Next Year to maximize Profit

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I have no reason to doubt your story. It's undeniable that the vast majority of well-off people have put more in than some guy just sitting on his couch, or barely doing a minimum wage gig.

But the main question is: does your wealth, by itself, give you the right to rule over everyone else, and demand taxation reductions that enrich yourself and impoverish others? Is it ok to gut the middle class in order to allow the wealthiest to accumulate more? Cos that's what's going on currently, though not near as much in Canada.

"the right to rule". You mean they ruled that about 47% of the poorest dont pay any income taxes at all? Thats pretty good compared to many countries where even the poorest have to pay some.

[danstanford]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I have no reason to doubt your story. It's undeniable that the vast majority of well-off people have put more in than some guy just sitting on his couch, or barely doing a minimum wage gig.

But the main question is: does your wealth, by itself, give you the right to rule over everyone else, and demand taxation reductions that enrich yourself and impoverish others? Is it ok to gut the middle class in order to allow the wealthiest to accumulate more? Cos that's what's going on currently, though not near as much in Canada.

Lake, despite all the protestations of rich folk who pay no tax, I have yet to see a way to take money out of wherever it is and put it in your wallet without paying personal income tax. Contrast my case with one of my kids who are not yet able to afford their own homes. If you add up the personal deductions, and the various programs they can access, they be less than zero in income tax. I am currently paying about half my income in taxes and listening to lots of people say I don't pay enough. Do I use more of the government's resources than my kids or is there some other way you can justify saying I need to pay more of a 'share'?

Despite caring enough to really pay attention to the issues that affect us all, I have never seen anything approaching facts that even the richest people are impoverishing/gutting the middle class. If the CEO is making too high a multiple of the other workers, it is not that the corporation wants to pay them an 'exorbitant' salary, merely that they need to to attract and retain the talent they need.

Finally, I completely agree that I should not be able to rule over anyone, even my employees. In no sense should I ever be able to impoverish anyone, nor do I ever attempt to. Like they and you do, I simply try to do the best for me and my family. Customers are the real rulers.

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

Of Course they can't....
Because the Rich being Rich doesn't make the Poor Poor.
That is the Biggest Lie of the Class Envy Marxists.
They use Envy to turn people into Classes and against themselves.
Take all the money from the Rich and it won't make the Poor Middle Class.
It Never does...but it sells...like hate and rage...Class Envy and being able to blame someone else SELLS.

Oops, look like we touched a nerve. As they say, the truth hurts. Here is the data from the congressional budget office. (FYI, the CBO is bereft of Marxists).

(I am really bad at getting images to display in this forum - bear with me.)



Ballparking from the Y axis -
Top 10% >100% increase in wealth
51st-90th gentile maybe 15-20% (hard to see this)
Bottom 50th - nothing

This is what the wealthy are doing - further enriching themselves through policies and lobbying such that half the population is making no progress at all. None. The bottom half are staring to figure it out - large majorities (at least of Americans) do not find these degrees of disparity acceptable when it is clearly pointed out to them. And don't patronize these people - just because they may be <50th centile for wealth does not mean they are stupid.

The big lie is the right wing "a rising tide lifts all boats" - that is absolutely, verifiably no longer true.

The mid-20th century "American Dream" mostly worked. The average guy could see that if he worked, his boat was rising. That is no longer true and there will be a reckoning.

No one is talking about taking all of the rich' folks money and giving it to the poor - that is a ridiculous paper tiger. You don't really think we are dumb enough to fall for that, do you?

You are sort of correct that "Because the Rich being Rich doesn't make the Poor Poor." But the way things are currently jiggered in the US they absolutely are. You have (probably deliberately) mangled this.
"Because the Rich being Rich doesn't necessarily make the Poor Poor." would be fair. In a healthy capitalist culture that would be and can be true. I don't know anyone who is against some folks being wealthy.
But even if that is true, it is also true that
"Because the Rich being Rich can make the Poor Poor." This is called kleptocracy and we are mostly there.

And stop with the 'class warfare' ruse. The class warfare that is being waged is by the wealthy against everyone else. The war is going well for them - they are well on their way to decimating the rest of the population.

Also, this does not mean that every person who is, say, in the 5% or the 1% is evil. It is that, as a group, they are doing awful things. Most people respond to incentives and currently, the incentives are set to give the wealthy an engraved invitation to transfer wealth from the middle and lower classes to themselves. It may not seem to any one of those individuals that that is what they are doing. And they would probably not do this consciously or overtly. But that is what they are doing.

[danstanford]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Wealth should definitely buy you “ stuff “ the question is should it buy you privilege

What a profound question. The answer is simple, no!

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by g0nz0

Don't want to get into a big discussion about how capitalism does/should operate, just want to say that Pharma bro Martin Shkreli raised the price of an AIDs drug from $13.50 to $750.00 overnight. Without an alternative available.

Yes, according to the book definition, this is capitalism. But man, is this how we want to live?

Good luck with your marina search.

Monopolies are special cases that do not full under capitalism. Capitalism implies open competition but with a monopoly, there is no competition and when abused, it implies that it is being purposely used to subvert the capitalist system.

Now there are places where it makes sense to allow a monopoly but typically they are heavily regulated. Utility companies are a common example as it doesn't make sense for a city to have 4-5 parallel power grids.

Pharmaceuticals are a special case where the costs are not directly tied to producing the end product. Tremendous amounts are spent on research and development and often a prospective drug fails out...if you expect to get new and innovative drugs, eventually it has to be paid for.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by lestersails

No, it most certainly does not. Ideally, it matches prices to demands - by lower AND raising prices. But capitalism is only practiced in right wing think tanks.
In the real world, businesses do everything in their power to distort markets to achieve monopoly power to jack up prices.
You fun-loving capitalists I am sure will be happy to pay higher air fares to the Caribbean when American Airlines zeroes out Jet Blue.

It doesn't always lower prices but on average it does lower prices because if the prices can be lowered while staying profitable, someone will do it.

Monopolies are not capitalist. They are abuses of the system.

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by David Ess

"the right to rule". You mean they ruled that about 47% of the poorest dont pay any income taxes at all? Thats pretty good compared to many countries where even the poorest have to pay some.

Always too clever by half, David.
You employ the ruse here of shifting to 'income tax' instead of total tax. By excluding all regressive taxes, you focus on one moderately progressive tax to mislead people (and perhaps yourself).
Lower income people pay a substantial portion of their incomes into taxes and so-called 'user fees' (like public toll roads). And Medicare and FICA. And renters pay property taxes - indirectly. Shall I go on?

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

It doesn't always lower prices but on average it does lower prices because if the prices can be lowered while staying profitable, someone will do it.

Okay, so I guess you are just going to ignore the OP's experience?

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by danstanford

Lake, despite all the protestations of rich folk who pay no tax, I have yet to see a way to take money out of wherever it is and put it in your wallet without paying personal income tax. Contrast my case with one of my kids who are not yet able to afford their own homes. If you add up the personal deductions, and the various programs they can access, they be less than zero in income tax. I am currently paying about half my income in taxes and listening to lots of people say I don't pay enough. Do I use more of the government's resources than my kids or is there some other way you can justify saying I need to pay more of a 'share'?

Despite caring enough to really pay attention to the issues that affect us all, I have never seen anything approaching facts that even the richest people are impoverishing/gutting the middle class. If the CEO is making too high a multiple of the other workers, it is not that the corporation wants to pay them an 'exorbitant' salary, merely that they need to to attract and retain the talent they need.

Finally, I completely agree that I should not be able to rule over anyone, even my employees. In no sense should I ever be able to impoverish anyone, nor do I ever attempt to. Like they and you do, I simply try to do the best for me and my family. Customers are the real rulers.

Its fake news about the rich paying no tax..in fact they pay most. But I realize that many dont believe the stats on that. Even the old story about Buffet, that disingenuous to cite a lower rate....lets see how many dollars he pays every year compared to his secretary.

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by lestersails

Okay, so I guess you are just going to ignore the OP's experience?

We addressed the OP's complaint that he cant afford that marina, and my complaint that I cant afford the one in St Tropez. We both wish we were richer. France is way more socialistic than the states yet even they dont have price controls on marinas.

[Bycrick]

"Class envy?" You betcha. Just because somebody got "richer" doesn’t mean the "stole it" from the "poor." A person that invested about $2000 in Apple in the 1980s would be sitting on close to $2 million today. Does that make him a greedy capitalist? In the 1990s, Amazon didn’t even exist. Does that mean that Bezos "stole" his money? A lot of this thread is people complaining that they (or their friends or like minded folks) haven’t got enough money to do what they want. There’s a limited quantity of Rolls-Royce’s available, too. Does that imply that somebody is deprived because he can’t buy one?

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by lestersails

Always too clever by half, David.
You employ the ruse here of shifting to 'income tax' instead of total tax. By excluding all regressive taxes, you focus on one moderately progressive tax to mislead people (and perhaps yourself).
Lower income people pay a substantial portion of their incomes into taxes and so-called 'user fees' (like public toll roads). And Medicare and FICA. And renters pay property taxes - indirectly. Shall I go on?

OK, resolved, they didnt rule that 47% of the poorest, shouldnt have to pay any income taxes at all. But sure, if they even ...ever drive on a toll road, they would have to pay, or use that marina that the OP guy cant afford. And the various gov welfare schemes are mostly paid for by rich people, unless youre one of those who deny all official stats.

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by Bycrick

"Class envy?" You betcha. Just because somebody got "richer" doesn’t mean the "stole it" from the "poor." A person that invested about $2000 in Apple in the 1980s would be sitting on close to $2 million today. Does that make him a greedy capitalist? In the 1990s, Amazon didn’t even exist. Does that mean that Bezos "stole" his money? A lot of this thread is people complaining that they (or their friends or like minded folks) haven’t got enough money to do what they want. There’s a limited quantity of Rolls-Royce’s available, too. Does that imply that somebody is deprived because he can’t buy one?

Exactly...its mostly envy of the rich...by boaters. Or its advocacy for even more socialism, by boaters, ones who wont admit theyre socialists, with their command economies, their price controls, their subsidies for boaters, etc.

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by Larry Florida

I agree.

In the USA poor people are poor primarily by an accumulation of poor decisions and priorities. Luck is a factor but a minor one. In the Philippines for example this is much less true.

I worked for 10 years before I got the so called lucky break. It can be done but rarely overnight as many hope. Similar to the dream of sailing around the world, few put in the effort required.to meet the challenge.

Wow folks, there you have it. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor.

And then - icing on the cake! You basically admit that you achieved some success because of a 'lucky break'. Yet you insist that it can't be true that the poor might be poor because of an unlucky break?

Or maybe because affluent people will not fund public schools in poor districts so a kid has an equal shot at a lucky break? Nah, better wail and moan with Grover Norquist that all taxes are bad.

The hypocrisy needle is pinned on the right.

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by lestersails

Wow folks, there you have it. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor.

And then - icing on the cake! You basically admit that you achieved some success because of a 'lucky break'. Yet you insist that it can't be true that the poor might be poor because of an unlucky break?

Or maybe because affluent people will not fund public schools in poor districts so a kid has an equal shot at a lucky break? Nah, better wail and moan with Grover Norquist that all taxes are bad.

The hypocrisy needle is pinned on the right.

I think he meant they deserve to be poor IF THEY DONT PUT IN THE EFFORT. Do YOU think those people deserve to get rich? Buffett says he had a lucky break to....to have been born in the states, in this century. But he wasnt a couch potato like so many losers who had that same lucky break...he put in a lot of work to get rich.