Politicians are politicians.
The point is, social spending, allocated and used correctly is, broadly, better for the population. If wealth inequality weren’t so high in the US, perhaps there would be less need for social spending. Or the current effects of said spending would, perhaps pre-recession, be already obtained by the people by their ordinary incomes.
That is to say, if it’s what the people want, then so be it. Or if it’s better for them, so be it.
I would agree, but math is not subject to popular opinion. Social spending, or all spending for that matter, must be less than the revenues that can be plausibly expected in an average economy from reasonable taxation.
Some countries are excellent at fiscal management: Canada and Sweden come to mind. Others look good for now, but have maxed out their revenue so that when an emergency comes, they’ll have no means of financing it. There have been many complaints about austerity in many EU countries, but what choice did they have? Who would loan them 5-10% of GDP at reasonable interest rates to do a proper stimulus? Only a few nations had that kind of fiscal wiggle room. Perhaps if they hadn’t maxed out their revenues and then spent every dime during good times, they would have been better prepared for the recession. As a result, most of the EU is still experiencing piss poor economic performance, while the US has been recovering for a few years, and Canada’s basically outperformed everyone.
What we don’t want to do is tax the rich the most we possibly can, spend every dime and then some, and then run into another recession that blows up our deficit. We can’t afford another one like that. Many individual states would go belly up almost immediately.
I’m going to need a citation for that second sentence. Or does that need an “in the long run” tacked onto the beginning?
Okay, in the long run, although it’s not that long. Less than a person’s lifetime. When we’re talking about cradle-to-grave social benefits, that’s not long. Means you help one generation throughout their whole lives(in our case, the GI generation) and everyone else gets only partial benefits. Progressives often like to tout how awesome the social welfare state has been, but considering that the first generation hasn’t even completed their path through it yet, that’s pretty short-term thinking.
If the EU has experienced piss poor economic performance, while practicing austerity, and the US has experienced a recovery with $1 trillion+ deficits, what does that tell you?
No, it does not. That’s National Review trying to find something wrong with it.
Longer wait times are a function of supply not meeting demand, which happens when you don’t train enough physicians (a problem in N. America since the mid-1990’s) or when physicians aren’t available in your area due to economic factors (a problem in the USA due to many communities being too poor to support private medical care). More federal funding of medical professional training solves the first problem, and socialized medicine solves the second.
:rolleyes: You have to be an American. Americans use air conditioning all the time because our climate is significantly hotter than Western Europe. Most of Western Europe isn’t fitted with central air, so instead of overtaxing their electrical grid and getting brownouts in a heat wave, they just get hotter.
The response to this belongs in the Pit, and I can’t be arsed to start a thread for it right now.
This isn’t strictly relevant. Wealth inequality in the US is such that more and more of the wealth is concentrated in the top 1%. Politicians are politicians, but if money is needed, that’s where it is.
Where I’m from 86 Fahrenheit might be a low in July. A day which gets up to 94 F for an hour in the early evening is a heatstroke day, sure–for a walrus.
Ultimately, it’s just what the people would want, and no, this desired state of affairs isn’t currently in place. Again, if perhaps the upwards wealth and income inequality wasn’t so extreme in the US, the benefits of certain social spending would already be obtained by people with their ordinary incomes.
And as far as the recession, there would be more money for stability and recovery if the greatest source of wealth were tapped more.
Greece is not Denmark. Greece is marked by endemic political corruption, Denmark a generous welfare state: NOT THE SAME THING.
Come back after you take macroeconomics.
And who defines “reasonable taxation”? Steve Forbes? R.J. Rushdoony?
Canada? Steve Harper has been elected PM three times, I think? And he can’t balance a budget on a bet! Maybe if a Grit from Québec took over, they’d have excellent fiscal management.
Oh, good, because*** we’re not doing that.*** We had higher top tax rates in the 1990’s than we have now, and even higher rates in the 1960’s, without causing too much economic trauma–high enough to fund the stuff we aren’t getting done now.
Actually, we now have higher tax rates than in the 90s for the wealthiest. Also, the real money is in the upper middle class’ income, unless you plan to just start seizing bank accounts of rich folks. What do you do after that? unlike income, that’s a one-time deal, confiscating wealth.
You find out when you raise taxes and revenues don’t increase very much, or not at all.
And economics aside, there’s also liberty to take into account, this being a free country and all. At some point the government is just taking too much. I’m sure you know what that point is for your own income. Take that number and apply it to all incomes.
Only if you totally ignore capital gains taxes, which is a major source of income for the wealthy. Here is a chart.
ETA: Here is an article from Think Progress (shields up) on how much of capital gains income is made by the wealth - 50% by the top 0.1%
Cite?
Oh, a 15% capital gains tax rate is liberty but a 20% rate is slavery?
Capital gains are taxed lower than regular income nearly everywhere:
A couple of nations that are examples to the progressive community don’t tax capital gains at all.
That’s only on property though, here’s more info on capital gains tax rates in various countries:
Some countries tax capital gains at the same rate as income, but allow the investor to exclude half of the gain from taxation, effectively cutting the rate in half.
Denmark has a high rate, but with lower rates for home sales, bonds, and stock dividends.
It depends on what I’m getting for it, doesn’t it?
Build a socialized medicine system, institute a generous negative income tax–giving spending opportunity to the underemployed and the undercompensated–and a poor schlub like me could be getting a good deal at a 60% effective rate of tax; because we schlubs would be coming out ahead on taxes less benefits. Which was the point of the OP.
That’s not true for a billionaire. the billionaire is taking almost pure loss on almost all taxes. The rich actually have different interests than the rest of us.
So it’s not a matter of scaling the same tax rate for all. So what then?
Do we give each person the amount of government they want? Shall we have socialist programs for the bottom 80%, less socialism for the middle-class and professional class in the top 20%, and a laissez-faire society with tiny tax rates for the top 0.1%? Who’s funding the poor in such a system?
Or do we try instead to build a society that tries to give opportunity to practically everyone who can make use of it? Because that means the rich* will feel robbed.* But for the rest of us, it’s worth it.
Yet convincing the middle class to pay more in taxes is a political nonstarter. THe left lost that argument a long time ago. Now we’re only negotiating how to cut spending to fit into the smaller revenue streams that we can get from taxing mainly the rich.
California just managed it, and with a proposition to, not from a legislative vote.
I never realized that property transactions were taxed so heavily in Europe. In the US private home sales are effectively free from taxation. 30 years ago you didn’t have to pay capital gains on a sale if you bought a home of equal or greater value than your old one, and you got a one time exclusion for retired people selling their final home. I think the laws are even more liberal today.
Thus, the capital gains I was considering was from sale of stock and the like, which is the only ones most Americans pay. And while it might or might not make sense to tax gains as ordinary income, today the rate is historically low and much lower than it was during the boom years.
Not to mention that a lot of investments of middle class people are in retirement plans, and gains in those are not taxed at all until they are sold after retirement,
Are your stock sales taxed as regular income?
I admit I was surprised, but California is a very liberal state. and didn’t they have to fool the public into thinking it was for education? Don’t they always have to sell it as for something specific, rather than to increase general revenues? I also notice from a quick lookup that the main tax increase was on the rich. THe middle class agreed to a 0.25% increase in the sales tax: phased in over four years. That was approved 55-45%. I think that exception proves my point about how much of a nonstarter higher middle class taxes are. It was the most liberal state, they had to tax the rich a lot more, they had to sell it as “for the children” and in the end all they got was 0.25%. That’s not a comeback for the tax and spend political class, that’s a death wheeze.
Thus, housing bubble. We also subsidize borrowing for a home, many other countries do not. We’re also trying to reinflate the bubble, whereas almost every other country is just like, “Oh well, housing dropped, let’s move on.”
