In our day though, the social contract is dead. No one respects the social contracts and if you want liberty you must purchase it and can actually destroy the liberty of those who are unable to defend themselves from those who have wealth.

If you want real upward mobility then we need to return to the idea of liberty. There should be no taxation on labor, only the profits of business. Taxation of labor is akin to ownership of people by the government. Remove taxation of property as well. If people choose they can live off their land and never pay a single tax, which is true liberty. If they have a business and make a profit, that is different.

The current system though is actually socialistic protectionism for the wealthy. That wealthy being the people on Wall Street and the banking system administered by the Federal Reserve. The central bankers and their founders are the ones that supported the setup of the IRS and taxation of the masses. They needed the masses to be taxed so that the banks could bailout their failed businesses and redistribute taxation onto the masses instead of them. This is how the wealthy fail forward, at everyone else’s expense.

Let me simplify it a bit. The banks print the money then lend it to their rich friends on Wall Street. Wall Street uses it at the current value of money in circulation, then goes out and buys businesses. When their buddies on Wall Street fail the banks bailout or attempt to use interest rate manipulation to protect them. If these businesses really make a huge mess then the banks bail them out, maybe even with taxpayers holding the tag directly. Either way, all of this debt is paid for in inflation and the loss of purchasing power by all laborers who are paid in dollars. Not only that it is a direct tax by the wealthy upon everyone who has a dollar in his or her pocket. This is a socialist system that is setup for the protection of the most powerful people in our nation, those who control the wealth.

I guess you could say you pay taxes twice. You pay one time to the government and you pay a second to Wall Street and the banks.

In a real capitalist system with a real free market there would be no regulatory banks and supply and demand would set the rates as well as risk aversion. Through the failure of banks, business upward mobility exists by new business replacing them. Also, real free trade that benefits upward mobility is trade that even the least of American citizens would be protected and allowed to buy and sell form a citizen in China or any other nation as they wish. Attempting to block free trade by large corporate entities should be seen as a direct attack upon liberty and the desire of the wealthy to entrench themselves as aristocracy.

A government’s only reason for existence is to protect individual liberty of each of its citizens.

Maybe we need a rule to have a separation of business and state, like that of church and state. In setting up our society I think the founders believed to much in the inherent decency of men of wealth to desire to do the right thing. A few of them hated hereditary rule, yet hereditary rule has often come out of families of great wealth who entrench themselves in society and government. And the last recourse to remove aristocracy has always ended in bloody war through out history.

I know what I am getting into. I know I will probably never make 6 digit annual figures. But out here in eastern NC, you can live a very comfortable life off of a fraction of what you guys in Raleigh and Chapel Hill make.

The Left isn’t talking about equality of outcomes, we’re just talking about having a fair playing field.

The Left in this country is always working toward equality of outcomes. You always talk about taking from the evil top wage earners (i.e. the “haves”) to give more to the disadvantaged (i.e. the “have-nots”). Which means the more I work, the more you want the government to take away from me to give to people who didn’t work as hard as I have worked.

I see you are completely unwilling to answer my question, as I figured would be the case… Why should a young person get up every day and work full-time and go to college if all they have to look forward to is the government seizing everything they work for so that someone who didn’t get up and go to work and school can be entitled to all of the same amenities in life?

You do seem to be in some type of time warp, krm. Your rant is vintage Ronald Reagan circa 1980. I’m surprised you didn’t mention Cadillac driving welfare queens.

Your point is basically ridiculous. When the top individual tax rate was 70% (before Reagan, when CEO’s only made 20 times the average worker) people in the top 5% worked just as hard as they did when Reagan lowered it to 28%. Now it is at 35% (and CEO’s make 400 times the average worker). Do you think a lot of CEO’s threw in the towel and went on the dole because it was increased to 35%? No. And if it were increased to 42% or capital gains were taxed at 35% rather than 15%, everybody would continue to work as their circumstances or desires dictate. One thing you will see, though, is that people in the lower tiers who have falling or stagnant wages will work more hours or get a second or third job (and their spouses will do the same).

Why should a young person (such as myself) get up every day and work full-time to put myself through college (yes I used the GI Bill for my undergraduate but I am paying for my MAEd out of pocket) if all I have to look forward to is the government seizing everything I worked for so that someone who didn’t get up and go to work and school can be entitled to all of the amenities that I want in life?

And yes, I consider healthcare to be an amenity, not a right. I have not had healthcare since leaving the Air Force in March of 2000 and I still manage to get up and labor 80+ hours for $300 a week. I am young, health and (at least for now) free to make my own decisions about my well-being.

If you guys have it your way, everything I am working for would be taken from me and handed to someone else who would then vote for politicians who espouse the larcenous policies you advocate.

The fact is the top 5% already pay a share of taxes that is vastly out of porportion to their numbers, while the bottom half pay very little. Many pay only social security and medicare, and a piddling amount of state and local taxes. To my way of thinking the fairest tax is one that taxes everyone the same rate, with some relief at the lowest end for those who work hard but still barely get by.

Yes, this is James of “Anglico” fame. And if this is Max of “Max” fame, I’m not surprised that you had this to say:

That said, I’m not troubled by wealth disparities as much as I would be about purchasing power or the inability to gain access to job opportunities, food, and shelter.

I haven’t noticed that you’re troubled at all about people’s inability to gain access to job opportunities, food, and shelter (and, presumably, health care). How many people must live on the street or suffer from chronic malnutrition or go without basic medical care to have the problem be large enough for you to be “troubled?”