It is clear why you used a made up example, because in the real world the brackets (except for the very bottom) top value is a bit over double that of the bottom one, so the size bracket n is > the sizes of brackets 1 to n-1.
I don’t know if there is or not but let’s say that there is. Let’s say that two people are equal in all respects except A is willing to work intensely and for 60 hours a week to get straight A’s, build a reputation on the job, and positions of higher and higher responsibility and therefore higher pay. B is content to be a C student, work a minimum wage job for 40 hours a week and spend the rest of his time partying. This difference in ambition is purely genetic, just like their eye color. Should A subsidize B’s income because their circumstances are due purely to chance?
Well, I agree with that but starvation is a much different point that a steeply progressive tax scheme.
Oh, but it is, and that was exactly my point. The better players might be lucky by the date of their birth, but the NHL does not weigh what opportunities you have had in life, it weighs how well you play hockey.
I’m sure somehow you manage to get by with a degree from MIT.
(I completely disagree with his point about the Beatles but that’s a whole nother conversation.)
Gladwell spends a lot of effort to show that Gates had opportunities that nobody else had, and starts out making an argument that Gates was the beneficiary of circumstances. This was after he talked about the advantage of being a hockey player born a certain time of year (“You succeed if you are born lucky”). But then he switches gears and discusses a study of teachers (IIRC) where he correlated success only to the number of hour spent and not any opportunities or innate talent. He also mentions a special public school with longer hours, more work, and therefore better educated students (“You succeed if you work hard and long”).
That’s why I say he waffles, because he doesn’t firmly take one position or the other.
I would agree with this. It was mostly lower level office workers I had in mind when I said that. But seeing as how that class of employee most likely makes up the greatest number of federal employees, bringing their pay and benefits in line with those of the private sector would be one way of cutting costs.
I don’t agree with what appears to be your opinion that lower level federal employees are paid what they’re worth and that private sector employees are underpaid because they don’t belong to a union. IMO, union employees tend to be grossly overpaid, which makes it harder for the companies they work for to compete and forces us all to pay more than we should for the products and services their companies provide.
I don’t care HOW many thousands if hours I practice, I will never be a good figure skater.
Bill Gates had a perfect storm of time, age, cohorts, practice, and a fledgling Operating System he bought for a song.
It’s also not like Bill Gates-type people are falling out of the sky, which would be the case if all it took was time to do be good at something.
Can some one explain something to me?
I live in Canada, I have a decent job (gross ~$95,000/year). I pay ~40% income tax. My wife makes about $55,000 year, she pays slightly less income tax.
I think even if I made $1,000,000 year I’d be close to the same tax bracket.
Is it a lot of money? Yes. Do I miss it? Kind of. Would I like legislation passed where I could exploit loop-holes and pay zero in tax? No.
Before you start calling me some kind of pinko-commie, I know if I stop paying these taxes along with tens of thousands of other Canadians our country would be screwed (e.g. see the United States).
Can’t the American fat cats making over $250,000 understand this? Your economy is in shambles, your infrastructure is falling apart around you, you have no federal health care.
I was watching “Real Time” with Bill Maher and he said that last year General Electric (I think it was GE) didn’t pay ANY taxes!
Can’t you all see if the top 2% paid even an extra 10-15% in income tax I’m sure your countries financial situation would turn around?
Is there some kind of a Constitutional ammendment stating freedom from taxes?
MtM
[quote=“CookingWithGas, post:142, topic:591739”]
I don’t know if there is or not but let’s say that there is. Let’s say that two people are equal in all respects except A is willing to work intensely and for 60 hours a week to get straight A’s, build a reputation on the job, and positions of higher and higher responsibility and therefore higher pay. B is content to be a C student, work a minimum wage job for 40 hours a week and spend the rest of his time partying. This difference in ambition is purely genetic, just like their eye color. Should A subsidize B’s income because their circumstances are due purely to chance?
[/quotes]
Who is talking about income subsidies, which I assume you mean inside a company? Companies should pay in relation to benefit to the company. I just wish they did more of this.
We hardly have a steeply progressive scheme now. In the '50s, yes. The point is that the tax burden should be roughly equal for all in terms of marginal utility, assume all are equally deserving. Those who consider poorer people as being poor because of some moral failing (and you’ve seen people around here doing this) you might treat them a lot differently than you would if you consider them poor because they had the bad luck of being born with an IQ of 75.
The NHL has no moral imperative to let anyone in to play hockey. But people who do play hockey should limit their patting themselves on the back to the fact that they are good hockey players, not that they are somehow morally superior to those guys born in September.
Here is how they think. Health care? I got mine, buddy, screw the people who don’t. Anyhow, the federal government would screw it up, just like it is screwed up for you guys. (You know your healthcare is terrible, don’t you?) But you say, you pay more for worse results. Answer: USA, USA, USA!!!
Infrastructure? Not in my neighborhood, I’ve got clout.
Economy in shambles? True, but the bank CEOs made lots of money. If we had regulated things like you, then they wouldn’t have done so well.
Now charging the rich more won’t close the budget gap. But it would help. What it might do is make us able to afford infrastructure improvements, and provide stimulus to jump start the economy again. Instead they are cutting state budgets, throwing more people out of work, and this is somehow going to help.
Remember, the discussion isn’t about how much taxes is too much. The pledge is to vote against any tax increase, or, it seems, to vote against closing any tax loopholes.
Barbara Boxer, my senator, called them fanatics, and she is right.
In both cases, the market has spoken, hasn’t it. However, in a time of low consumption, I fail to see how reducing the pay and thus the spending of yet another class of workers is going to help with anything.
Corporate profits are high. That is a good thing, in general. However, they won’t be high for long. They might have stayed high longer if the companies had funneled some of the money to their workforce, increasing consumption and thus sales. Then they can hire more people, and we can begin to recover.
I’ve heard many times from execs that you can’t cut your way to profitability, not in the long run. You have to grow into it. You can’t tax your way into it either. if the economy grows, we can cut unemployment and welfare payments and get more tax revenue, and increase tax rates on everyone now making lots of cash. That’s the way to cut the deficit.
I’m far from my first billion, though.
But I’m an excellent example. I was born smarter than most, cough cough. I had parents who supported education, and got brought to the library as soon as I could walk. I had a father who was willing to sacrifice to send me - and I also got into Cooper Union, where my Regents scholarship meant I would be making money going to school. I got to go to the best non-specialized high school in New York City at the time, just by where I lived. I was damn lucky. I am damn lucky.
I could be making more money if I liked doing management shit, but I hate budgets with a passion, and have chose to do stuff I love. Some people around here seem to think anyone who doesn’t start or try to start a business is morally inferior - in which case I’m morally inferior.
Yes, but it needn’t be so. You can draw the tax brackets anywhere in any which way you please. If you want to make it step up in even increments, you can do that. If you don’t, you don’t have to.
The point is, you should look at people’s “stacks” of money, determine how much more of it you need, and then set the tax rates accordingly from the bottom up. It’s not like we can only adjust so many brackets and then you can’t touch it. If you decide that you need to take an extra penny from each of a thousand dollars, then it doesn’t matter how many brackets that is…bump up 12 brackets if you have to!
You’re calling me innumerate, but what’s really happening is you’re looking at the brackets, dusting off your hands and saying “Nothing can be done” when you haven’t even thought about it. Go back and do my exercise again, but this time, with the knowledge that you can set the rates and brackets to anything you need them to be.
You didn’t ask me, but I’ll answer anyway: No, of course not. Just because B didn’t have the same opportunities doesn’t mean that A owes him anything. B got to work less hours, slack off, and go to parties…he’s had his cosmic compensation.
I think you’re incorrectly thinking that those two statements are contradictory. It’s more like “You have the opportunity to succeed if you are born lucky, but you only succeed if you work hard and long.” After all, Bill Gates’s classmates aren’t all billionaires and not all January-born Canadians are world-class hockey players.
The quote is “Fortune favors the bold”, not “Fortune favors the lucky.”
Not true, according to Gladwell. I make no claim that he’s right, but he says that assuming the practice is actually geared toward improvement, you will be a good figure skater.
As has been quoted many time, you know who else didn’t pay any taxes? The bottom half of all Americans. The top 20% paid 80% of the tax. Now if you can see that things would improve if the top 2% paid more, can’t you see that things would improve even more if the top 90% paid more?
Fortune, in the phrase, means luck.
Luck pretty much does favor the lucky. That’s why we call them that.
Carry on.
I knew it. I knew it. I even debated out loud with the fiancee whether or not I could slip it through the censors. But no. This is the Dope. We can’t leave well enough alone. That’s why I love it here.
I guess I should have went with the runner-up, "It’s not ‘fortune favors indiscriminately.’ "
Sorry. I just couldn’t resist.
No, it’s because they justifiably feel that they, too, should have a $250,000 income.
Yeah. So is everyone. There are only like a thousand billionares on the entire planet.
It has nothing to do with “moral”. You get paid based on how much the market values the product of your labor. Not how hard you work. No one is going to give you a million dollars based on the company you “could” create.
The average income in the US is around $50,000. So what makes someone think they are justified to earn 5x that unless they are doing something that requires a particularly rare and valuable skill?
I was responding to this:
[QUOTE=Leaffan]
Jesus Christ. $250 K is a king’s ransom in Canada, My wife and I are professionals working in the public service and we pull in about 70% of that combined! And also our income taxes are higher. And mortgage interest isn’t tax deductible. And we have a federal sales tax, and provincial sales tax. And gas is much higher. And alcohol. And tobacco.
And.
And.
And.
Raise your fucking tax rates and quit fucking up the rest of the world.
Thanks.
[/QUOTE]
I do not dispute your cites but I do not understand the thinking above. Help me understand how Leaffan feels that the US is somehow screwing up the taxes/revenue in Canada and by extension somehow fucking up the rest of the world.
Then, knowing this (remember what Starving Artist said - “It should be none of your concern.”) they justifiably feel that they, too, should have a $50,000 income.
I was referring in a general sense to the position (and I’m getting tangled up in who is responding to what; this may not be *your *position) that if one person makes more than another, it’s unfair. And the implied answer to my rhetorical question is “no.”
This is my point exactly.