“Corporate welfare” accurately describes the situation and is commonly used.
Then neither is “welfare” for the poor. From now on folks should only use the actual program names: WIC, TANF, SSDI, etc.
Why do you think it’s incorrect to state that stock ownership is dramatically consolidated in the rich? The top 20% owns over 90% of the stock in the US (circa 2007 - the trend implies it’s probably larger today).
I am curious how much of that giving goes to their church.
I see no cite for your numbers but I would be curious to see what the numbers look like if you remove giving to religious organizations.
Piffle. Charity rarely solves social problems, just alleviates guilt for those who indulge in it.
I say we raise the tax rate to 100% on people making less than $250,000 per year and cut all social programs and have done with it. Then the Republicans will have nothing to complain about.
Paying an equal percentage (a flat tax) is fair in one sense. Paying equal absolute amounts (a head tax) is fair in another sense. Paying an equal amount of utility (a progressive tax) is fair in still another sense. The latter is a progressive taxation system due to the declining marginal utility of money.
All of these can be considered fair in some sense, and unfair in another.
Do you think a head tax is unfair? If so, why does the same reasoning not apply to the flat tax?
I’d ask for a CITATION on this but…:o
Any employee of a company that provides a pension fund and is vested in that fund owns the common stocks that comprise the assets of that fund. Employees of many major corporations participate in stock ownership plans.
I recall several years ago that a major bank–I believe it was Bank of America, but I’m not sure–reported it had well over a million individual shareholders.I doubt that all of those were of the eeeeevil rich 1%.
In any case, stock ownership being concentrated in the top fifth of the population wouldn’t seem to be “a tiny minority” or “dramatically consolidated.” The top 20% in the US is still over 60 million people.
A head tax is the only fair tax if you consider that all citizens are equal and each should share equally in the burdens of paying for government.
A flat tax (fixed percentage of income) is the only fair tax if you consider that the obligation to pay for government increases linearly as a citizen’s earnings increase.
A progressive tax is the only fair tax if you consider that the obligation to pay for government increases geometrically as a citizen’s earnings increase.
There are legitimate philosophical underpinnings for each of the three positions. The trick is to find a disinterested party to choose between them, i.e., the poor will naturally favor a progressive tax, and the rich a flat or head tax.
Not sure if serious, but here it is: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html. The primary cites are Wolff, E. N. (2007). Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze. Working Paper No. 502. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. and Wolff, E. N. (2010). Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze - an update to 2007. Working Paper No. 589. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
The key point is that even though lots of people own some stock, most people under the top quintile own very little. For example, in the top quintile over 70% of individuals own at least $10k in stock, with it going up to 85% of folks in the top 10%. For every other group the percentage that owns that much is under 50%, with the bottom quintile only having 2% of individuals with $10k in stock ownership. This includes stock owned in investment accounts, 401(k)'s, mutual funds, etc.
No, of course not. Lots of folks own stock. But every few own a significant amount.
Well, obviously YMMV on what “dramatically consolidated” means. Half of Americans own no stock. Only 31% own more than $10k (which I think everyone would admit is a rather low threshold).
Ironically, there are quite a few rich people who support a progressive tax and almost certainly a number of middle-class and poor people who support a flat tax. Since they are all acting against self-interest, I suppose any of them could be considered disinterested for this purpose. Of course, the rich people almost certainly know that a more progressive tax would hurt them, while a lot of the people supporting a flat tax who would be hurt by a flat tax seem to be under the mistaken impression that they would benefit. So I guess that leaves a progressive tax as the likely choice of a disinterested (or non-self-interested) person who actually knows what they are talking about.
There seems to be a lot of talk about whether progressive taxes are fair or not. I’m not sure that is the correct question, I don’t think they’re supposed to be fair. The majority of the voters in the country have decided they want higher taxes on the rich so they themselves can have a better life, be it for health services, welfare, infrastructure or other government services.
Those people know that this will make some rich people move to another country but they are happy with that, they also know that some rich people will be happy paying the higher taxes as even after that they will still be rich, but may live in a nice country with happy people.
Caviar can be detrimental to ones health. Should the government tax it more like it does with cigarettes, for the reasons you state? Now, perhaps caviar is not the best example, but I think there an inherent problem when government tries to decide what legally sold products its citizens should or should not partake of.
You can say the same for government programs, but at least people who donate to charity are using their own money to alleviate guilt. Those who advocate for higher taxes are using other people’s money to alleviate their guilt.
But it would be nice if they were both fair and expedient.
You can make a pretty good argument that progressive taxes are fair even to a libertarian. The author of The Darwin Economy does so. In a nutshell: If you assume that people are fully free and sovereign individuals and are considering forming states on a mutually agreeable basis, it’s in the interest of the most talented and capable to accept progressive taxes in order to entice the less talented to join up with them. Larger societies have much greater opportunities for the successful to become wealthy, so it’s better to balance the burden in favor of the less successful in order to form a large society.
His full argument is more complicated than that, and this argument is only a part of his overall claims made in the book. But he makes a decent case for both progressive taxation and some government constraints that are often considered “nanny-statism” from libertarian principles.
The army won’t do jack squat if foreigners invade, so long as they only destroy property? News to me… but since you say the army doesn’t provide more value to a rich person than to a poor one then I guess it must be so.
On the contrary – mathematicians as far back as the eighteenth century have pointed out that a logarithmic utility function provides a reasonable rough measure (and avoids paradoxes that arise from a simple linear utility function).
This neglects the fact that investment is impossible without a rule of law, for the obvious reason that the people physically squatting on any bit of productive property would take whatever wealth it produced regardless of anyone else’s legal claim thereto. Destroying the mechanism by which existing wealth breeds more wealth obviously inflicts extra pain on the currently-rich – even if they don’t burn up too much of their existing assets protecting themselves from the breakdown of the system, they can’t replenish those assets as they did before.
The problem with this is that it is impossible to accurately compare utility between people. I think some libertarians can exagerate the implications of that but it is true.
Investment is more expensive without government but not impossible. If I have a gold mine, I can depend on the government to protect it or I can hire a couple of people with guns to protect it.
Wrongo. The rich have far more property to protect. They have much more to lose by the USA not being “World Policeman” and that’s a huge part of a national defense budget. It is hardly a shock that various Right-wing & wealthy buddies of GWB have profited the most from the Iraq war.
After the self-funded parts (Soc Sec, Medicare) biggest chunk is defense.
We can get the senior citizens behind this by doing ONLY the lifting of the cap. Seniors are concerned abut Soc Sec funding. This would secure funding for Soc Sec for another decade or two.
Instead of means testing, just make a little more of Soc Sec taxable each year. That seems to be mostly painless and not too hard to get past AARP.
Means testing simply will never pass. There’s moral reasons for that also. Best just to tax it more, and increase collections. Sure, a few millionaires will blow their “paltry checks” on a case of champagne- let them.
I also agree about tobacco taxes. Thi sis indeed a very fair tax in that the payers decide themselves how much to pay.