I live in Utah. We solved homelessness here, or didn’t you hear the good news?
On a more serious note, there’s no reason for someone to be homeless in SLC, UT, except that they reject offers to help. Look at the last paragraph of that WaPo article:
It wasn’t “sorry lady, no room for you”, it was a long time trying to convince her to accept the offered and available assistance.
After summing payroll taxes, federal, state, and municipality income taxes, sales, vehicle, dividend, interest, property, gasoline taxes, Medicare and social security taxes, taxes on services, hotel taxes, and I’ve probably missed a few. Are you sure?
Good for Utah. Unfortunately, that’s not going to fly in most cities in the U.S. Here in Seattle, there’s enough argument over where to allow the homeless to make their own camps; let alone providing housing for them.
For most of the country, ‘There’s no room at the inn.’
Seattle should give them bus tickets to Salt Lake. Perhaps I should move to Seattle. :eek:
Why do you have such a hatred for people inheriting money? What does it do to you? What if a rich person wants to leave all their money to their handicapped child, someone who can’t reasonably hold a job? Or maybe they give it to a daughter who wants to volunteer for a non-profit?
You’ve admitted that you don’t want to confiscate inheritance for revenue; you just want to stick it to all rich kids. Again, that’s a terrible reason for a tax policy.
Homelessness is more of a mental health issue than a problem with housing supply. Is it possible to equalize innate mental ability?
The poor are still better off. As I posted recently in a near-duplicate thread:
It’s even up for the lowest income quintile, although only a bit. I spent most of the 200’s in the lowest income quintile, and there’s no way I would have traded that for the lowest income quintile in the 70s or 80s, partially due to these increases, but more so due to some of the other quality-of-life changes others have mentioned. So the rest of us can do well even if the rich are getting ludicrously richer. There is no stagnation or decoupling from productivity.
That doesn’t mean it’s all puppies and sunshine. Possible dangers include the feedback loops that septimus mentions. I’ll see if I have time to grab some quotes from the book he mentions, which I read on his recommendation. It’s good. Imperfect, but what isn’t?
Note that the video you link to shows charts for wealth inequality, not income inequality. They’re linked, but not the same thing.
I’ve not teased it apart, but I believe much of this small increase is due to changes in tax policy. So when the OP asks “how?”; taxes and transfers are a way. Whether that’s a good way is another question.
I don’t have “such a hatred”. I’m just explaining the rationale behind the existing estate tax policies.
And honestly, I don’t have too much problem if people with estates worth more than 5 million get those taxed fairly heavily. We’re not talking the struggling family inheriting 20k from a recently deceased parent. We’re not even talking about the upper middle class family inheriting a couple hundred grand and a reasonably well valued home from their parents here.
What we’re talking about is people, who by any measure are ***rich *** bequeathing sizeable fortunes to their heirs, who instantly become rich as well.
To some extent, you’re right- this is something that disproportionately impacts the very wealthy, but at the same time the estate tax IS the most progressive aspect of the US tax code.
And, lest you grind your teeth on that silver spoon too much, on an estate of 6 million, only 570,000 would actually be taxable, since that’s the amount ABOVE the exemption level, so basically everyone gets their first 5.4 million untaxed. Beyond that, it’s about a 17% tax rate.
So you’re getting your panties in a twist because some guy inheriting 10 million from his rich parents only actually sees $9,223,100 because the feds taxed him about 800,000.
Cry me a fucking river.
And don’t forget that most of a large estate will consist of unrealized capital gains which have not been taxed and will not be taxed except by the estate tax. (Although this may have changed very recently?)
It’s an emotional argument. You just don’t like rich kids getting lots of money from their parents. I’m open to raising taxes on the wealthy (on inheritance or otherwise) but there’s got to be a policy reason behind it. “They won’t miss it anyway” is not a good reason.
The estate tax, like the corporate tax (and most state income taxes) are practically flat taxes. The brackets are pretty thin so if you pay an estate tax, you are likely paying close to the top marginal rate. The exemption is $5,450,000. The top marginal rate of 40% is paid at $6,450,000. But, you are already paying 30% by the time you get to $5,550,000.
Wage inflation is probably one of the best ways to redistribute wealth. Make all income that is subject to the social security tax exempt from the income tax, expand the EITC and pay for it with increased marginal tax rates and you will see a pretty dramatic effect assuming that everyone doesn’t move to Monaco.
Corporate taxes used to be a MUCH bigger part of our tax revenue but international tax competition has driven corporate tax receipts pretty low.
Political rhetoric during the floor debates or before they vote on the bill says nothing about its actual effect. I was opposed tot he bill when it was passed as well but we saw poverty and the unemployment rate drop in the following years. And its not like the economy sucked in 1996 and was awesome in 1998. During a good economy, there might be such a thing as too much welfare.
It removes some of the social safety net for when times get bad but there does seem to be a silver lining to welfare reform.
Almost everybody has the opportunity to succeed like brin and page. They are not the children of wealthy parents but they ARE the children of very smart parents.
I don’t know that you can really level the playing field of genetics and parentage.
There are two major policy reasons why taxing the wealthy is a good idea. The first is the declining marginal utility of money, which is why progressive tax rates are a good idea. Tax the rich more because it won’t hurt them as much.
The second is that it’s a Pigovian tax. If you tax something, you get less of it. So we should tax things that have negative externalities. Taxing income from working and income from investment are deeply problematic from this stance. We want people to work and make money. We want people who have money to invest it in effective ventures that result in economic growth. We should try to make those taxes lower.
Sin taxes and luxury taxes are a great example of effective Pigovian taxes. We’d all be better off if we smoke and drank less and bought fewer yachts. So we ought to tax those things pretty highly.
Massive intergenerational wealth transfers also have negative externalities. Money provides access to political power, which almost always results in rent-seeking and regulatory capture. Once you’re rich, there are all kinds of biases in the system to keep you rich. Taxing massive transfers helps keep us from developing a permanent aristocracy. And, compared to other taxes, does less harm to those taxed, and doesn’t penalize something that has societal benefit. It’s Win-win (-lose, for the fabulously wealthy).
Investments are deductible. By having higher taxes, it encourages investment so as to lower the tax burden on the income or capital gain.
I’m not sure how this is a response to the point I made, which is that we should tax things we want to see less of.
I’m not sure what you mean by “investments”, but under my understanding of the word, they are not in general deductible.
If I have $500 in income and a choice to go buy some stocks/bonds with it (investment) or go out to a really nice dinner (consumption), neither choice will result in my getting to deduct anything from my taxes.
Maybe he is talking about an IRA or 401K? Those are deductible but there isn’t a lot of overlap with estate taxes.
The problem why the rich are getting richer in the US and the poor are getting poorer in the US and the middle class is despairing really fast is jobs.
Most factories and warehouse are gone or going to China and India. The US is turning into a service sector economy now.
The problem it is flooded with too many people. There are long lines to get jobs so the employer can pay you dirty pay with little to no vacation time.
There are too many people and not enough jobs. So the employer can pay you dirty pay with little to no vacation time.
And so the middle class is despairing really fast.
Two points:
Poverty is fearing violence. Poverty is leaving your kids in unsafe childcare. Poverty is commuting three hours a day on the bus. Poverty is exposure to hazardous chemicals. Poverty is lack of preventative healthcare. Poverty is fear of what comes next, insecurity, instability, lack of political power, physical pain, exhaustion and hopelessness. And above all, poverty is about lacking choices and lacking agency.
Yes, cell phones are nice. But what’s important to people is to feel safe, to have time with their family, to participate in activities they value and to feel like they have choices in life. So while we don’t have the most extreme deprivation, that doesn’t mean American poverty isn’t a real thing.
The real issue with extreme inequality is that it slows social mobility. And social mobility is a beautiful mechanism for making sure that the smart poor people get a chance to apply their talents and that the dumb rich people don’t end up in charge of stuff.
Without social mobility, you waste the potential of huge chunks of your population, which isn’t good socially or economically. And you end up with power being allocated based on who your parents were-- which isn’t always going to lead to the best outcome.
The most economically successful country is going to be the one where each individual is best able to reach their full potential, and extreme inequality is a force against that.