It wasn’t my intention to imply that all people who are physically ill are poor and unemployed.
I instead intended to point out that chronic illness is one factor (among many others that are beyond an individuals control) that may very well push someone into poverty and unemployment.
I maintain that a background of poverty is a critical factor for a future of poverty. Yes some people born into poverty may be able to become successful but these are the exception to the rule. The simple fact is that impoverished people have vastly fewer opportunities to attain an even middle class standard of living.
That’s true of an adult. I may have not been clear here but I was referring to children who are kept out of school because their parents just can’t be assed to take them, perhaps even prostituted or made to sell drugs. These children are born into a mostly hopeless situation.
I live next to an economically depressed area of Chicago. The neighborhood consists in large part of boarded up and burnt out buildings. The schools are sub par, there are few jobs to be had, and violence is a daily fact of life. It should be clear to even the most jaded observer that being born into this environment severly limits the options one has and does not reflect the assertion that:
Why is not paying Federal Income Tax that big a deal? It’s not like the U.S. was founded on the idea of the duty of paying Federal Income Tax. Besides, there’s no point demanding that everyone pay Federal Income Tax because a significant chunk of the population has very little money. You can get more out of Bill Gates (and have him barely notice) than ten thousand welfare-dependent families (who will have to skip meals as a result). This isn’t an issue of morality, but simple math.
I do appreciate, however, that Huerta put in the effort to specify “Federal Income”. I’ve seen too many arguments that leave out these critical descriptors, ignoring the variety of other taxes Americans, even poor Americans, contend with.
OK - I apologize for the complete tangent but I have to ask…
Has there ever been a study that incorporates ALL taxes (not only income but sales tax, property tax, vehicle registration, taxes on gas, alcohol, cigarettes - ALL taxes) to see what % of income various demographics pay?
Yes, how did we get to that point? Or perhaps a slightly different question is “why”?
There is a threshold below which a person does not owe any U.S. federal income tax. Your argument seems to be that that threshold should be adjusted based on what percentage of the population falls below it. Why? As the economy expands and contracts, as unemployment rates rise and fall, the percentage of people who fall below the threshold will change. (Or, the threshold would need to be adjusted up and down each year to maintain the proper ratio of taxpayers to “freeloaders”.)
My questions:
Is this really what you are proposing? It seems to me that there is some level of income at which someone needs every penny they earn just to subsist at some basic level. Doesn’t it make more sense to base the tax threshold on who truly can’t pay? Imperfect as it is, the government already tracks poverty level.
What percentages of taxpayers/non-taxpayers would you find acceptable?
Would you adjust other levels of taxation in the same way; if 2% of the population earns an income that puts them in the highest tax bracket, would you adjust that bracket each year so that it always captures 2% of the populace?
So, yes, we have reached a point where many people do not have sufficient income to owe any federal tax on it. Did we get there because the tax rules changed, or because people’s incomes did?
True, but to fairly state the other side of the argument, it is not the actual paying of the tax that makes the qualification a rational one, but the ownership of the property itself.
If I own a piece of property in Boise, ID, I have a legitimate economic interest in seeing Boise and the state of Idaho prosper. If I rent, I don’t have any scratch in the game. I could pack up and leave in the morning; I’m not invested personally in the area. Same way with the homeless guy buying liquor. He can hitchhike and buy liquor in Washington State the next day. He doesn’t have a vested interest in seeing Boise succeed.
By buying property, I have shown an intention to invest part (or all) of my resources in the area and have a very distinct and personal interest in voting for policies that will make my town and state prosper to protect/enlarge the value of my investment.
The flip side is that the renter or the homeless guy might be in favor of policies that benefit them personally and the fate of Boise and the state of Idaho be damned.
Your cite proves the opposite of what you think it proves:
Wealthy people in blue states (conservative and liberal) are funding pretty much everyone. I think the figure was that two percent of the population pays 50% of the federal income tax. Rich conservatives in New Jersey and California (and rich liberals, I’ll concede) are subsidizing welfare moms in Mississippi.
Apples and oranges and I’m surprised you’d bring property taxes (strictly local, possibly pertinent to local elections if anything) into what I thought was a discussion of my contention elsewhere that people who don’t pay federal income tax don’t necessarily deserve the same vote in federal elections. And federal income tax is of a much larger magnitude, anyway, than most people’s property tax.
You don’t think I’d be cool with abolishing the income tax altogether? Try me. It’s the disparate application of it. The OP comments negatively on the concept of aristocracy. My contention is that in recent years, the class of federal income tax is moving toward a weird form of involuntary aristocracy in its own right, with a comparative handful of people subsidizing an increasingly large group of people with no investment in the federal income tax pot who want a share of the loot. As we’ve moved toward half of all Americans not paying any income tax, we’ve also seen dramatic bloating of the number of people collecting protracted unemployment and living off of food stamps (41 million (!!) last I checked). Correlation/causation and all that, but entirely consistent with a world in which a hefty percentage of the population, disenfranchised from putting up an ante but not from voting, finds it agreeable to vote for the politicians who will promise them more more more on the backs of the Evil Rich.
But there’s a really strong corrolary argument that able-bodied adults should, as part of the social community, more or less be able to get their s__t together and support themselves, most of the time. It’s a two way street, and people who are earning low or no income out of not having their s__t together are a big part of the problem – I don’t think we’re going to find that a majority of the 41 million people buying Ding Dongs in front of me at the supermarket with their EBT card are disabled are retarded. To the extent that poverty maps to laziness and general dysfunction (substantial, I contend), poor people may have argued their way out of the full application of communitarian principles by flouting the community standards that assume adults will pull their own weight.
Notably, some of the most reliable and effective communitarian safety nets exist within communities in which most of the time, most people do pull their own weight. The Mormons have a great social welfare network. It works precisely because people don’t use it unless they absolutely have to and (surprise surprise) most functional adults don’t have to. And there’s nothing innately privileged about Mormons (or citizens of countries like Japan, with a strong work ethic alongside strong family/ethnic cohesion and support for those who do fall on hard times). Historically they were a bunch of immigrant farm-stock Swedes or whatever.
That’s a pretty damn mercenary way of looking at things. People who don’t own property still have an interest in the health of the community. And do you judge the success of the community based only on the value of your property? Your home might become more valuable if there was a park nearby; would you support a measure to bulldoze the homes across the street and put in a playground? Would you sell your property to someone who offered you a profit on it if they were going to build a strip mall?
That ignores the unique federal/state relationship that we have in the United States. We don’t have federal registration. It is done by the states. It is rational for the state of Idaho to want voters to represent the state’s interests (and by definition city and property interests in that city) instead of a general devotion to the United States.
Presumably, the property owner would have a devotion to city, state, and country as opposed to just country.
Its good to know that you are operating from a position of clear-eyed objectivity, and not some reflexive bias.
Perhaps what we need is Citizen Worthiness Panels, to go over each on a case-by-case basis, weed out the bums. Gonna need a lot of folks for that, since we got millions of people in that category. Any recommendations, outside of yourself?
I know! The solid American citizens of our financial community, who have so recently demonstrated their unswerving allegiance to firm ethical standards of hard, productive work!
Oh, and your hardworking farming Swedes? Pretty much founded the People’s Republic of Minnesota.
That’s nothing to do with my point (which was not that Swedes or farmers as such should be our role models). My point was that there was nothing special about their background that gave them a leg-up to be self-sustaining. The whole notion behind redistributive thinking is that there are deep disparities between what we can expect from people of varying circumstances, we need to level the playing field, etc.
The rich have been getting their taxes cut over and over. They are collecting a bigger and bigger share of wealth in America. Yet some still “think” that they are being forced to pay more than their fair share.
That shows a complete misunderstanding of what is happening in America like the concentration of wealth beyond the gilded age.
Ten Swiss banks have given the US information on the bank accounts of wealthy American depositors who setup accounts to evade taxes. In order to cut the tax rates of the rich, yet again, it would be nice if they actually paid them.
That’s easy. Since our esteemed protagonist seems to be focused on matching voting rights to Federal taxation, please look at this pdf and flip down to the table at the top of page 6. Link.
One finds that the lowest 20% of income earners in the US, which earn an average of $18,400 per year, do indeed receive money from the Federal income tax system. However, because of payroll and other Federal taxes, they pay an average of 4% of their income in Federal taxes. You will note that on a percentage basis, those payroll taxes take twice the bite out of their paycheck as they do someone who makes $400,000 grand a year (the poorest people pay an 8.8% payroll tax on their income, the top 10% pay less than 4.5% in payroll taxes).
I have to wonder why the Federal income tax is being proposed as the true measure of one’s worth to society. What level of income tax paying is appropriate to get voting rights? Is $1 sufficient? Or 1%? Or 5%?
Why is it not fair to say that if one pays an insufficient amount of payroll taxes – let’s say, less than 4% – then those people should lose their voting rights, no matter how much income tax they pay?
That argument applies to property that cannot be sold (like a medieval fiefdom). For real estate as it actually exists, the owner’s incentive (from a pure economic viewpoint) is to inflate a bubble, sell, and leave somebody else holding the bag. Great spur to civic virtue, that…
