[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
You’re saying, for example, that you’re paying too much. Scandinavians pay more and yet have a higher rate of life satisfaction. Why does your opinion on this matter hold any weight versus that provable reality?
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Well, this one is easy at least. My own answer is, I’m not Scandinavian, so saying they pay more and are more happy is irrelevant. Perhaps if I were a Scandinavian I’d be good with their tax rate, but I’m not and since I have no plans and zero desire to move there it’s kind of moot. Most of my fellow citizens feel the same way (I don’t think even most liberals in the US really WANT THEIR taxes to go up to those levels, instead simply wanting the rich to take the brunt, like the OP), and no doubt most Scandinavians who are still in the old country don’t have a driving desire to move here, so to each their own I suppose.
All that does not inform us on how a particular individual in the US feels about his taxes. No doubt there are Americans who are happier than Scandinavians, and maybe he’s one of them. Surely you’re not claiming that all Scandinavians are happier than all Americans. And you don’t even know for certain that he, as an individual, pays more or less than the average Scandinavian. And it could very well be that what those other countries have achieved with their higher taxes is not even pf much value to him. This is all way to subjective for the kind of analysis you are talking about.
If we’ve made the best country there is by paying less in taxes than most all those other guys, then they must be doing something wrong. Best to keep to American exceptionalism then.
Hence it’s not a benefit available to them.
I’m trying to figure out what assistance benefits Joe is actually supposed to be getting?
I dont think he is getting EITC unless he goes and knocks someone up, and like you said he isn’t having any list of itemized deductions, he isnt making enough to spend that much.
Even if we exclude the option of moving from one country to another, the point would remain that your opinion of something has no relevance to the reality. I can be certain that I can walk unimpeded through walls, but that belief is going to have no relevance to the first wall that I try to walk through. Reality will interject.
I’m reasonably sure that there’s no evidence that a lower tax rate makes anyone any happier beyond short, moral victories. If I was to take the data from all of the countries in the world, I’m pretty certain that there’s either going to be no correlation or a negative correlation. The best you’re going to get from a lower tax rate is no change to your life. If there is an impact, it will probably be to make your life worse, over the long run. You can believe differently, but your belief only lasts up to the point where reality interjects.
And again, note that I’m not advocating for higher taxes. I’m simply pointing out that the call for lower taxes is almost completely based on faulty assumptions. There are arguments to be made for lower taxes, but they’re going to sound less like “We Need Lower Taxes” and more like, “Data mining has revealed that the value added of the United States military is quadratically correlated between the total spending and a reduced cost of shipping at a rate of <insert quadratic equation here> with a significant drop off after $100b, making further spending past that point a poor investment.”
I think a negative income tax is a good idea. Have the poor file tax returns showing how little money they make and get a big “refundable credit” from the government. Earned Income Credit is a form of this, but it requires actually having a job, which we now know is a bit too optimistic.
I suspected that, from my reading of the article. But, as you note, it is a bit confusing because it is aimed at the employer not the employee. So, in theory, one could get full pay if they filled out all the appropriate paperwork and could get their employer to go along with it, but in actual practice probably no one does that.
Once the appropriate paperwork is filled (which isn’t enormously difficult), the employer is legally required to “go along”. The paperwork to fill is the one which the employer uses to calculate how much to withdraw; my own US withdrawals always came within $20 of the amount actually due (I with my Spanish ones were that accurate - I get 4 figures back instead).
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Even if we exclude the option of moving from one country to another, the point would remain that your opinion of something has no relevance to the reality. I can be certain that I can walk unimpeded through walls, but that belief is going to have no relevance to the first wall that I try to walk through. Reality will interject.
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Yet you are trying to assert that because Scandinavian’s pay more and are happy (as if there is a direct correlation there) that this would be true for American’s as well. There isn’t any reality in that, just your assertion based on a nebulous correlation.
Yet you are asserting that a higher tax rate makes people, at least in Scandinavia presumably, happy. I’m pretty sure that, in the US, many people would, in fact, be happier with a lower tax rate…for themselves. Generally, it’s all about having someone ELSE pay more, regardless of if you are liberal or conservative. You can ‘believe differently, but your belief only lasts up to the point where reality interjects’. You are free to believe that Americans long to be crushed under the same taxes as the Scandinavian’s…but if you actually tried to impose similar taxes your belief would crash up against reality. Still, since you won’t be able to do that, feel free to maintain your belief that we are just the same.
I am not advocating for lower taxes either…you seem to be making some assumptions based on very little input from myself in this discussion. What I said was ‘Well, this one is easy at least. My own answer is, I’m not Scandinavian, so saying they pay more and are happier is irrelevant.’ What this means is that I don’t have any desire to move to Scandinavia (or anywhere else in Europe) and pay the levels of taxes they get there because that wouldn’t make me happy. If someone tells me they are happy when someone beats them, well, that’s irrelevant to me, since I wouldn’t be happier if someone beat me…quite the opposite in fact.
That sounds as if you think Scandis are happy because they pay high taxes. One of the reasons they’re happy is that they get very high services; they view the high taxes as the payment for those services.
Would you consider it a good thing if your college education and that of any children in your family required only cost of living as “out of pocket”? No tuition, very low cost of books unlike the “bleed the students dry, then bleed them some more” book prices of the US.
It’s actually quite easy and the instructions are on the same form that are used to declare your normal withholdings. At a federal level, it’s done on your W-4, and each state will have it’s own forms. You simply right “exempt” instead of the number of withholdings and it’s done. It’s quite common at lower income levels and I’ve done it when I was first starting out. At a state level, each state may have its own form depending on whether it relies on the federal form, or it even collects state income tax. CA it is the DE-4.
[QUOTE=Nava]
That sounds as if you think Scandis are happy because they pay high taxes. One of the reasons they’re happy is that they get very high services; they view the high taxes as the payment for those services.
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No, I know what their taxes go towards. I understand that if you want the government to provide a lot of services it costs. I understand why this appeals to Europeans, including the Scandinavians. While I would love to have more services in the US and I’m a big fan of a reformed (and possibly single payer) healthcare system, I wouldn’t be happy paying more taxes for more services. Probably why I’m happy being an American and don’t long for a European style government that does everything from a social perspective…and pay high taxes to ensure that.
No, I wouldn’t think that’s a good thing. I’m fine with the system we have wrt college education and wouldn’t be thrilled to pay a lot more taxes for my working life to ensure everyone’s kids get to go to school for ‘free’. Again…this is why I like living here and don’t have a desire to live there. It’s not ignorance of what they have, it’s that what makes them happy doesn’t make me happy and vice versa…which is the point I was trying to make to Sage Rat.
During the time of “the greatest generation” when we had great economic progress, the top marginal tax rate was a smidge higher than it is now.
We could look at our own history, we don’t need to look to other countries.
Now that we have a pretty nice country (I dunno about best, depends on how you view it), we have decided to stop spending as much to improve it and keep it nice. We are now consuming the largess of the sacrifices of those who came before us, and not leaving anything for the next.
We don’t value education, we don’t spend on infrastructure improvement or even maintenance, we are ruining the environment.
We don’t make a great country by sitting back and admiring how great a country it is, we make a great country through hard work and sacrifice.
I was being somewhat facetious and playing off the idea that ours was the greatest country. As for the time of the “greatest generation”, I’m not exactly sure what you mean, but if you mean right after the war years, let’s remember that the US was virtually the only industrial power left intact in the world. We could hardly do anything wrong, economically speaking. I would not look to that time as a model for the country now. One thing I do know is that our tax system is riddled with counterproductive exemptions and breaks for special interests. I don’t know if we end up with net higher or lower taxes, but we’re due for a massive overhaul of the entire thing.