Bernie Sanders’ tax plan would not have negatively affected about 96% of Americans. The tax increases were mainly just extra brackets for household incomes over $250,000 per year. And even then, the increase would only be by a few percent unless your household was making more than $2,000,000, which is almost no one (so even if all those people vote uniformly Republican, it probably wouldn’t sway the election).
People talk about a lot about lowering taxes and how that means more freedom, etc but most of the time their taxes aren’t even in question. In fact, under Republicans they might even end up paying slightly more in taxes. Best case scenario is they’ll see perhaps a 3% decrease in taxes, but for most families this is only a few thousand dollars a year.
And while even that may seem significant, if progressive taxation allows for universal healthcare and tuition-free college, then most families would in the long run overcompensate greatly for the relatively minor amount they would possibly lose to taxes, which most likely they wouldn’t lose anyway.
The point of progressive taxation is that the wealthy have a lot more disposable income and so their standard of living is almost unaffected by such increases in taxes, whereas those in poverty have much better living conditions as a result of those tax increases. It also helps to lessen wealthy inequality which is what causes inequality of opportunity problems, higher crime rates, and poorer public services that are damaging to the poor. In Nordic and a lot of European countries where these sorts of policies are much more implemented, their employment rate is actually higher than the United States. The idea that strong safety nets will kill incentive to work is asinine because people are still going to desire to have more than just their bare minimum needs met. Stronger safety nets actually make it easier for people to get out of poverty and thus increase socio-economic mobility. Also, with progressive taxation, the middle class would be healthier and able to spend more on goods and services as they wouldn’t be bogged down with healthcare and tuition costs, and thus would help stimulate the economy and even indirectly help the wealthy.
But even with all that aside, why do so many people act as if higher taxes means less freedom for them when in actuality for almost the entire population it means more freedom because 96% of the population would see little to no tax increases and in addition simultaneously have healthcare and tuition costs taken care of? On the other hand, the practice of lowering taxes would almost do nothing for the majority of the people because most likely their rates wouldn’t even go down or even if taxes were to be lowered on all income brackets by several percent, it wouldn’t make a lot of the middle class much more money anyway, only to also not have universal healthcare or tuition-free college which would likely in the end cause them to lose more money. Seems to me that a Republican coming and lowering taxes would if anything, actually take away from their freedom.
If all other things were unchanged, then, sure, lower taxes would mean more freedom – freedom to do other things with that money.
What a lot of libertarians overlook is that tax money makes you more free, by paying for police protection, fire protection, environmental protection, education, and so on.
So it’s only a fantasy that “taxation is theft.” A very widespread fantasy, alas.
The implication is that lower taxes means you have more money to spend as you want. As opposed to having the central government decide what to do with the fruits of your labor. The general idea is that government is at best inefficient and at worst it is corrupt and tyrannical. So the less money it has, the less it has to waste on boondoggles and special interests.
Yes, I feel like that is a common mantra that unites anarchists, Tea Party, Ayn Rand Objectivists, Libertarians and jerky people who just don’t want to pay taxes.
It is perhaps more accurate to say that “taxation without representation is theft”. Taxes are a necessary evil, but the people being taxed should have a say in how much and how it is spent.
I get that, but given this context, it seems so asinine when some middle class dude is talking about how lower taxes is going to mean more freedom for him because as I said in the original post, the tax decrease would probably not be applicable to him or even if it did, the amount of money he’d save would likely be much less than the amount of money he would now have to pay for tuition and healthcare.
It’s possible to oppose something even if it won’t negatively impact you, or if it will positively impact you. Cigarette taxes are a good example. I don’t smoke, and I would prefer not to be around other smokers when they are smoking. I also vote against every single proposal to increase cigarette taxes. Less people smoking overall would benefit me based on my preferences, and increasing the price of cigarettes doesn’t hurt me at all since I don’t buy them and are not impacted by their sales. But I am against the principle of sin taxes as they offend my sense of individual liberty.
I suspect they hear the words “higher taxes” and either don’t realize or don’t believe it wouldn’t mean higher taxes for them. Or they somehow hope and expect that they’re going to get rich enough some day that those higher taxes would affect them. Or they’re afraid of a sort of trickle-down effect where the wealthy would somehow pass the burdens of those higher taxes down to them.
They’re suspicious of government’s ability to have things “taken care of,” at least in ways that preserves their freedom? They already have those things taken care of for themselves, or think they do, and fear that increasing access will decrease quality or availability? They just think TANSTAAFL?
Well the thing is a lot of times, they don’t even seem to realize that this is the case. They actually believe that they’re going to lose a substantial amount of money to tax hikes.
But actually, this is more of an “even if” defense. Preceding that is the argument about how wanting to keep the taxes low and not wanting to provide adequate safety nets to the poor is the selfish position in this case. Or if it’s not selfishness, than a fundamental misunderstanding based on the "Just World’ fallacy - that the poor are as such because they were lazy.
After that, what I am saying is, even if this person is to purely vote in their own self-interest and based on selfishness, even personally they would benefit more from progressive taxation policies.
The point is that a progressive tax system is better for the population in general (non-selfish stance). Then I’m saying that even if a person is to vote out of simply their own self-interest, a progressive tax system is still most likely, unless they’re in the top few percent for income, to be more beneficial.
Money is freedom and rich people have the most freedom which means they have the most freedom to lose. Also higher taxes means bigger government, which means less freedom. Regulations take away their freedom to pollute rivers and mistreat workers.
Taxes might be theft, but they’re the good kind of theft. That’s one of the original examples of the noncentral fallacy.
marshmallow: Thanks for the link. I’d never heard of the non-central fallacy, at least not in those terms. I’d always thought of what was described as the appeal to emotion, but the analysis in the link shows it’s a bit more subtle than just that. Fun and informative!
That would be a good* cite if he was only proposing changes to the Federal Income Tax rates. But he’s not. This cite (linked to in my cite, above) is more comprehensive.
*And even then we have to trust that Bernie’s own site is telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Do you always believe a politician’s own analysis of his tax plans? If so, I have a bridge you might be interested in.
Someone earning minimum wage and paying no income tax will have 10.56% lower income (not “about 10%” … 10.56%). Someone earning $100,000 will have exactly 10.56% less income. Earning $10,000,000? Exactly 10.56% less.
Does this seem plausible, or even sensical, to you, John ?
I didn’t bother to click your link. No matter how sound the original analysis, a journalist even much more innumerate than the average “financial” journalist (and that’s pretty innumerate) imposed himself in between.
Their analysis includes the effect on the overall economy, which is where that comes from.
But there are plenty of other examples, like an across the board hike in the payroll tax-- which affects everyone who works. Now, Bernie’s plan says it’s only an increase on the part that employers pay, but we all know that employers are generally not just going to absorb that cost themselves.
Bernie’s tax plan is quite complex, and represents a pretty big shake-up of the system. As noted in the Times article, there will be winners and losers, but the idea that the only losers will be the rich (per the OP) only makes sense if you look at one small piece (the change in Federal Income Tax rates).
Lower taxes tend to be sought only by those who already “got theirs” from the tax-revenue-supported system. Education and job/employer support subsidies come at taxpayer expense, but tend to be forgotten when “self-made” individuals hit the higher tax brackets that pay for these societal benefits. Especially by those whose kids are also done with school; every civic expense except for police in their area and golf courses tend to get lumped into “government waste spending.”
It would be funny if it weren’t so persistent and predictable. Especially among those who have absolutely no clue what the current tax/spending cycle brings them, every hour of every day.
I guess a lot of them are about to find out, though.
For anti-statists, lower taxes means less revenue for the government to provide a social safety net, regulate, etc. They feel the state is the biggest threat to their freedom, and view lower taxes as reducing the power of the state.
Which, not to repeat myself, is the viewpoint of those who have financial and other stability (or imagine they do), and often believe such stability is within the grasp of anyone who cares to reach for it, and thus oppose governmental services for those who do not have economic stability.
In other words, taxes go to support government that is for other (lesser) people, and are extracted by economically oppressing those well-off enough not to need those services. Which, if true, could support the general anti-statist, Libertarian viewpoint… but those AS/Ls are overlooking the governmental support that got them where they are, along with their illusory “self-madeness” and bootstrapping.
There is a false narrative that the government only helps those who cannot help themselves. So any government help is seen as shameful.
I can’t find it, but there was a poll a few years back where a sizeable minority of elderly people said ‘no, I do not get any government help’. Which is idiotic. The elderly are the biggest recipients of government help. social security, medicare and to a lesser degree medicaid almost all go to the elderly and virtually everyone over 65 gets government help. There are sizable chunks of elderly people who get their social security checks and go to a medicare sponsored doctor who genuinely believe they do not get any government assistance.
But admitting you are on a government program is shameful, so they invent a reality where they are not on government assistance. Or they invent a false narrative that ‘I paid more into the system than I take out of it’, which is also a lie.
That doesn’t even take into account things like education (which makes up about 1/6 of all government spending), military and defense, infrastructure, etc.