Replies to post #52533 on Biotech Values

[xrymd]

As long as you send in 39% of your income to the government. I am ok with sending 39% of mine. By the way when you were partying I was studying.

[OakesCS]

OT-taxes

We've all worked hard, and usually the lowest paid worked far harder than most (ever picked lettuce?).

Lettuce - no. Corn, berries, melons... yes. Straight alongside people who were not US citizens. Please present any quantitative evidence that the lowest paid work "harder than most". Aside from that: why is it relevant to work "harder"? Why isn't working "smarter" something to be rewarded?

My family owns a farm in an area where the unemployment rate is now about 6% and in the past 10 yrs has been in double digits - but good luck trying to find a US citizen to work. My brother even tried carting people 60 miles both ways from a homeless shelter but they had a tendency to squawk about "slavery" after working for an hour. Somehow these poor "downtrodden" folks you seem to be inclined to redistribute wealth to are perfectly content to chain smoke, drink heavily, buy lottery tickets, and do crack. Now I live in Cambridge MA and I see the same sort of people sitting around Central and Harvard square all day (I am "projecting" since I do have a job but I do get to those places at fairly random intervals) yet somehow folks that barely speak English seem to find jobs and survive here.

I tried to ignore this topic but you are flat out wrong. Taking money away from the successful just because they are is just a disgusting extreme form of envy. It has nothing to do with "basic civics" - rather the converse. You also have a deranged version of history if you think this country's growth and wealth had anything to do with 50% tax rates. You might want to investigate the date when federal income taxes were instituted.
cso