I was not talking about federal income tax being progressive, but about sales tax being regressive along with the lack of income tax in WA state. So, my comments about income tax being progressive was about a hypothetical state income tax in WA. Also how the low tax burden in WA State is not driving people out of Seattle as the OP postulated. We haven’t seen OP return to this in many days (they posted elsewhere but ignored this one), so no updates on their theory about Seattle.
Overall though, your comments about the federal income tax is right on.
Edit to add: I guess income tax is not naturally progressive and I don’t know how states handle it. A 25% across the board income tax is not progressive. Maybe that is how some states handle it. Ignore all my comments about income tax being progressive. Sales tax is definitely regressive, even when you omit taxing food.
I just want to state that not all liberal people believe that we shouldn’t bring back mental hospitals or asylums. I would argue that a properly run asylum is more humane than allowing someone to live hungry and cold on the streets.
The bigger problem is deciding on the rules for forced admittance. A drug addict does not belong in the same place as someone who is incapable of functioning in society. But of course “incapable of functioning in society” also means different things to different people so there is another argument to be decided.
Obviously, there are a lot of different reasons that people are homeless so there must be more than one solution. In California, affordable housing is a problem.
I consider myself very liberal and want everyone to be happy. That includes me and it definitely doesn’t make me happy to have a homeless camp next to the lovely creek that runs through my neighborhood. I don’t like thinking about where the people are using the toilet.
My point is that income taxes such as I have seen display a (mathematically) progressive façade, but once they are implemented, their progressive characteristics vanish in a malstrom of exemptions and deductions. In order to be fair, an income tax must include exceptions, and ultimately, those efforts at fairness get subverted into an effectively non-progressive tax.
On the basis of that, I contend that income tax is not ipso facto progressive and typically is regressive when you examine the result. This is normal and to be expected because wealthy parties have influence in government and will always lobby, usually sucessflly, for favorable-to-them treatment.
I’m sorry, you’re just wrong on this one. I pulled out my 2022 tax return, and I made $357k last year and my effective tax rate was 25.4%. After every deduction and exclusion possible, I paid over $90,000 in federal taxes.
My 23yo son will make about $40k this year, and according to my calculator would pay $3040 in federal tax, or 11%.
You can argue (and I would) that sales taxes or lots of taxes are flat or regressive. But US federal income taxes are progressive: high earners pay more than average joe, a lot more.
Fort Worth, TX has to be the closest thing to a red big city. It’s growing as people flee places like San Francisco. They are focused on crime and homelessness. Guess what their murder rate is compared to San Fran?
While there’s no doubt San Francisco is facing a crisis of unhoused people and seeing an exodus of businesses and residents, the increase in crime has mostly been nonviolent. Measures put the California city’s homicide rate at about 6.9 per 100,000 people, far below Fort Worth’s rate of about 11.
Guess the crime they are focusing on isn’t murder since that would probably be about guns (Yellowstone). Better to focus on petty crime.
I was just thinking that there were two cases in Florida the past year of people opening fire from their moving vehicles because they “felt threatened.” No charges were filed against two involved parties because of stand your ground laws.
In one of those instances, it was a actually a running gun battle, on the the road. There were children shot in both vehicles.
That’s what’s so fascinating to me. Oh no! California won’t prosecute someone for shiplifting $50! What a lawless wasteland! Meanwhile in Texas or Florida you have people wandering around with guns like they’re Mad Max and getting away with blasting one another away because EVERYTHING in these states is “self defense”.
…I just read this twitter thread about an initiative to turn a hotel into homes for 100 unhoused residents. Just watch this video.
For those that don’t want to click: its a crowd booing and hissing at the county executive as he tries to talk about the proposal. This is from Millbrae, just outside of the “progressive stronghold” of San Francisco. Although this doesn’t look very progressive to me at all.
I can’t get the boos and the hisses out of my head. If you are wondering why issues with the unhoused can’t get fixed, it isn’t because of progressive people or progressive policies. It’s because of these people.
The one thing virtually everyone agrees on, whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, is: “Whatever happens to the homeless, we don’t want them near us,”
There is indeed a NIMBY vibe to it but, honestly, no one wants them sleeping in front of their house.
I had a tent city around the corner from my place for a year. Rampant and obvious drugs use (and I mean more than pot). Hygiene (defecation/urination nearby). Crime rose and was violent…as in murder more than once (that is what finally got the police to oust them).
I asked my building if we could do something to move them AND help them…the building decided that was too fraught to bother with. Call the police and let them deal with it.
There’s more to the American political spectrum than a democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, so much more than can even fit into your “virtually” qualifier. I think our refusal to recognize that goes some of the way at least to explaining why problems like homelessness are so seemingly unsolvable. When we have our collective blinders on, certain obvious solutions might end up in a cut-out.
Our homes are the single largest investment/expenditure most of us will make in our lifetime, so it’s understandable that we get a little nervous about anything that might lower the value or become a blight on the neighborhood. We had a lot of people in my neighborhood fight against the proposed construction of an apartment complex nearby. I admit it, for a second I thought about joining in, but then I thought about all the people who do need housing and I didn’t want to stand in the way of that. When it comes to the problems associated with a lot of homeless in the area, I have seen fairly liberal people take a hardline stance against them.
That sounds like a bit of a bourgeois problem. I assume most people want to see their rent go down (not go down by blighting the neighborhood, though), especially if it means they can afford to live someplace better than a tent city or a rat-infested roach motel. As you say, cheap apartments sound good.
I’m new to this thread, but this happened in my city. That people are treated like this is an abomination, and it absolutely goes against everything I stand for, and my EMT training (not to mention my sense of compassion in general) is absolutely disgusted by this.
On a personal note, @Banquet_Bear, I want to thank you. You and I seem to share a lot of the same values, but you’re able to articulate those values much better than I ever could.
