I was just wasting time this morning and ran across this.

Seems about right.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you’ll ever read.

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

"You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!" This is where a lot of people lose it...they think "wealth" is a pie and there are only so many pieces to go around. So if you get more, I must get less.

We know this isn't true, but this *is* being taught to us as a financial truth these days. If Bezos and Zuckerberg are getting richer, WE much be getting poorer.

But what's in their pocket has ZERO effect on what's in my pocket.

Yeah, lets all make sure the wealthy and corporations pay no taxes and let the corporations donate as much as they want to political campaigns.

Then, lets cut social security, medicare and veterans benefits, kill every proposal to fix up our infrastructure, and remove all mental health care to make sure the wealthy can continue to pay no taxes.

Ed, I hate to break it to you but the wealthy pay the majority of the income taxes. It's a well known and documented fact that the bottom HALF of taxpayers pay in only 2.3% of income tax revenue while the top 1% of earners pay in 42.3% of income tax collected. Some of those 5 have their source in ancient texts that have weathered the rise and fall of multiple empires. As Horace said "He who is greedy is always in want". Who are you going to blame when you have depleted all the wealth in this nation? Greed has no bounds.

No one is saying cut all the programs. Straw man...

That said, I will say welfare and social programs are rifle with corruption and should be cut considerably. Charity starts with family, then organizations within a community, then the community itself. I cannot think of any highly successful Govt programs for alleviating poverty outside the local community level. Many encourage generational poverty.

As we landlord know, when expenses go up, so do prices to the end users. So if you want to raise corporates taxes or taxes on the rich... expect those costs to get passed down one way or another. Meanwhile, the rich who have armies of lobbyists and lawyers will find ways through the loop holes that politicians will leave for their donors. This is how politics works: anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

from MikeA

"As to corporations, who do you think ends up paying those taxes? That would be us that are customers of those products and services. All corporate tax is passed on to customers raising prices and increasing inflation. Ultimately this makes US goods more expensive than the world competitors which in turn reduces sales of US goods/service eroding our wealth further."

I totally agree, the problem is you can explain this to people that think that the problem is solved by taxing corporations more. Actually when this is pointed out most will agree,..but 2 days later they are back to repeating the same.