- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Rarely mentioned impoverishing

Posted by: borg ( Anarchy, Inc. ) on April 06, 1999 at 14:32:04:

In Reply to: I dunno, RD. posted by Samuel Day Fassbinder on April 05, 1999 at 17:00:34:

[...]

: but of course if MrPoor has nothing to trade, if he's shut out of the market (and, again, one can turn to a random page of Jeremy Seabrook's VICTIMS OF DEVELOPMENT to recognize that there are millions of people in this situation around the world), then Gee's primary response to the situation is to accuse MrPoor of "robbery" if he develops a sudden urge to eat that can't be satisfied by existing charities. Gee also doesn't seem to think practically about situations like the one described here.

[...]

Interesting article primarily for what it leaves out.

Also interesting is Lester T's solution. It would be
another in the Endless List of Grand Plans that
have come before, all so conventional and predictable.

Excerpted from http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.14/taxdays.html:

The Tax Foundation (http://www.taxfoundation.org/), a non-profit, non-partisan organization devoted to studying tax issues, offers a variety of informative measures. The first is "Tax Freedom Day"—the day on which the typical American has worked enough to pay her share of federal, state, and local taxes for a year, and the rest of her income goes in her pocket. In 1998, Tax Freedom Day was May 10—in other words, the typical American worked 130 days to pay taxes. Another way to look at tax costs is to calculate the number of hours per eight-hour workday that the average American spends working to pay taxes. By this measure, an American spends almost 3 hours each workday paying taxes. That’s longer than the time needed to pay for household-related items (including housing itself), food, and clothing combined.

Another group, Americans for Tax Reform (http://www.atr.org/), calculates the "Cost of Government Day", which includes all taxes as well as other costs of government that individuals ultimately bear, including federal regulatory costs (e.g., EPA mandates, affirmative action compliance, laws that increase business costs, etc.). Including these costs, in 1998 a typical American worked to pay for the government’s activities (federal, state, and local) until June 25—almost half the year.

...on the coming crash, see here. (very long)



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