In an IMHO thread:
I’m pretty sure Keynesian deficit spending relies on spending, not tax cuts (which would only make things worse). But I’m not actually an economist.
Your second point is a thread poking out of a philosophical large knit sweater worth unraveling…
So let’s do it!
We live in a democracy. Each citizen of age has a vote. For those who want to, “run the government like a business,” consider that you are a full partner with millions of other citizen-partners.
So then, (in the USA) where’s my dividend, partner?
Oh, that’s right, a majority of the partners have decided that we don’t pay dividends. We don’t even have a sovereign wealth fund. Instead this “company” is treated like some kind of club where we have to pay dues, or “taxes.” What a gyp! So much for running it like a business!
The “Great Society” was supposed to fix that, I guess, but I guess in the 1960’s nobody was thinking about the USA as a giant partnership to run like a business, so it got sold on some other line.
So, now, Qin here says that in the interest of equality before the law, we should charge everyone the same dues.
Well, I’m done then. This business isn’t profiting me, & I don’t really agree with the terror drone attacks, I vote to dissolve the partnership & shut it down.
What do you mean I can’t?
So I have no control over the continued existence of the military-industrial complex, & I’m not even getting paid regularly? And now you want me to pay the same taxes as a government employee, or a government contractor, or some billionaire investor collecting rents on the companies he owns?
Hang on, hang on, I’m calling al Qaeda, they may have a better offer…
Short answer: no, it does not. The long form answer is left as an exercise for the student.
I have to quote this, 'cos it’s a good answer.
I disagree that income tax by bracket in general violates equality.
No. Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad. Very settled law.
Plus, the poster quoted in the OP doesn’t even have his facts right with respect to any proposal to raise taxes right now. The proposals to raise taxes have them kicking in TWO YEARS from now.
And you have a problem with that? Let’s not forget that there are quite a few military families are on “wefare” because the breadwinner isn’t paid a decent salary. I would think their tax rate is lower than yours.
Just sayin’. The rest of your post is pure gold.
This whole equality thing is the last leg that conservatives have to stand on to support their (literally) bankrupt ideology. Every other justification of supply side policicies has collapsed and this is the only thing they have left. For what it’s worth the fact that the rich pay a greater share has been established and agreed fact in every major economy for over a century, just about from the time of Adam Smith who also advocated that the rich pay a greater share. Only with the loony tune right over the past few decades has anybody seriously questioned whether the rich should pay a greater share, and at first slashing their taxes was justified by claiming that it would pay for itself in one way or another. now that that justification no longer has any credibility we’re hearing this equality nonsense.
It would close the deficit problem and leave a massive surplus if the rich actually paid the same percentage of their income as low/middle income earners. Or even somewhere close. Put up capital gains to somewhere near the level of total taxes that low/middle income people pay would be a good start.
A “flat tax” is only fair in the most naive sense of “fairness”. The value of a dollar (in terms of actual impact on your quality of life) is drastically different if you’re rich than if you’re poor. Or to put it another way, the marginal utility of the one millionth dollar is a lot less than the marginal utility of the first dollar.
What’s fair is for everyone to pay the same tax rate on their first dollar as one another, and to pay the same tax rate on the second dollar as one another, on up to a million and beyond – not to pay the same tax rate on the one millionth dollar as the first dollar.
If there’s a problem with the fairness of our income tax system in the U.S., it’s that there’s only a handful of tax brackets and that the highest one extends to infinity. (Also, too many tax loopholes, but that’s a whole other can of worms.) We also have sales taxes and property taxes and such which aren’t progressive at all.
The problem is certainly not the existence of progressive taxation … unless your idea of fairness is roughly equivalent to “the poor and middle class get screwed (even more than usual) in favor of the rich.”
:rolleyes: :dubious: :smack:
America and the world face grave problems. Economic problems, of course, but other urgent problems as well. That Moody’s has placed the U.S. Treasury on credit watch is not a joke.
The problems are severe enough that respected commentators have made drastic suggestions.
And yet many Americans seem lost in unhelpful and irrelevant rhetoric, e.g. the question in thread title. This is sad and very frightening.
As I mentioned in another recent thread, U.S.A. income inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) is now worse than that of Thailand. Yet when one reads Opinion at newspaper blogs or even here, much of the American complaints are from millionaires who feel persecuted when asked to help out a little. :smack: :mad:
I would say it’s very equal, in that anyone can earn millions of dollars and all those that do are taxed at the same rate. What makes it somewhat unequal is that those with the best tax lawyers pay the least tax - in percentage terms, not total amount.
I think this whole ‘Poor rich people, why should they get taxed so much’ is a red herring. The government is for the people and of the people, it tires to be fair to a certain extent, but the idea is that the majority get the country they want, and since the majority of people aren’t rich it’s a shame that the rich seem to get the most say. The exceptions to people getting what they want are there to stop things like systematic racism or sexism, bad discrimination in all its forms, but I don’t think taxing the rich a bit more could be counted as similar to sexism. The ideas that everyone is treated exactly the same is not what most people mean by fair treatment, otherwise why have grades in school, or some jobs paying higher than others.
Despite Republican efforts ‘the rich’ are not a protected class. We do discriminate based on income level and most Americans are OK with that. In fact in recent polling we are more then OK with that, we’d like to increase taxes on the wealthy.
What really do you think is “equality before the law”???
Nobody is forced to make large sums of money. Everyone who does so is taxed in the same way, at the same rates, with the same deductions, loopholes to exploit, etc.
If you could show that it was aimed at a somehow protected group (race, creed, colour, sex, national origin, marital status, age, sexual preference, etc.) and the tax rules gerrymandered to pick on that group, you might have some valid argument. But “equal before the law” does not mean everyone pays the same amount, or same proportion. It means the same rules apply to everyone when they are in the same set of circumstances.
First off, everybody pays the same income taxes, including rich people. A person who make s 10 million/year pays the same tax rate on their first $50,000 dollars that I do.
Second, to turn this question around, is it fair that rich people get more advantages from government spending than I do? To clarify: all the spending and subsidies for national infrastructure (roads, bridges, railroads, telecommunication), the defense of our trade with police and military might (police investigations of fraud, protection from unscrupulous foreign trade and pirates, etc…), and all the spending on making an educated and healthy workforce. All of these benefit those that have the capital to exploit them much more than it benefits me. Is this fair?
Just throwing it out there in case any of the wealthy people here actually think that they are truly lacking in equality. Nothing requires you keep all your money you could easily join in with the rest of us. I personally feel so bad about the unjust treatment you receive that I’d be willing to carry your burden for a while, Let me know if you need an address for the check.