What (if anything) would you pay higher taxes for?

[Fear_Itself]

@MichaelJohnBertrand

3. Therefore the middle class all have cars
4. Therefore they are completely unwilling to vote for politicians who will invest in better, faster, cleaner, more efficient mass transit. (I mean, it’s just going to benefit poor people, so who cares? I have a car! I’m not poor!)

America is such a great country, the middle class outnumbers the poor!

[MichaelJohnBertrand]

@Fear_Itself

America is such a great country, the middle class outnumbers the poor!

That’s true of all modern pluralistic capitalistic democracies. The middle class is the largest population group. It’s a bell curve, with the poor at one extreme and the wealthy at the other.

[XT]

@Fear Itself

America is such a great country, the middle class outnumbers the poor!

America is such a great country because the middle class FAR outnumber the poor…depending on how you define both of those terms of course. Further, America is a great country because folks we consider ‘poor’ wouldn’t be in many other parts of the world.

Of course, as MichaelJohnBertrand pointed out, this would go for most of Western Europe and parts of Asia (like Japan and South Korea) as well, so it’s all relative.

-XT

[threeorange]

@MichaelJohnBertrand

I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. Throughout North America, public transit is considered to be for poor people. Taking it has a serious stigma attached.

How do managers get to work? They drive. Just like everyone else.

It’s hard for Europeans to imagine this, because they’re used to mass transit being everywhere and thus, it’s just plain easier to get there via Tube or Metro or whatever. But we Canadians and Americans don’t have that sort of mass transit.

It’s a terrible cycle, which goes something like this :

1. People think mass transit is for poor people.
2. Therefore anyone who can afford it gets a car and drives
3. Therefore the middle class all have cars
4. Therefore they are completely unwilling to vote for politicians who will invest in better, faster, cleaner, more efficient mass transit. (I mean, it’s just going to benefit poor people, so who cares? I have a car! I’m not poor!)
5. Therefore mass transit, where it exists, tends to be underfunded, inefficient, slow, ill-maintained, and general something you’d have to be poor and desperate in order to use and which you’re going to escape via getting a car ASAP
6. Therefore, only poor people use mass transit

And so it goes, and so it goes.

In Europe, from what I can tell, everyone takes mass transit, and therefore it was to be good, or the middle class will flex its powerful muscles and raise an unholy stink until it’s put right.

This is why American college students are so amazed by the Eurail system.

I think this stigma is more pervasive in the less densely populated urban areas of the South and West. I take the Red Line el to work here in Chicago, and the majority of the people on the train with me are other middle class people on their way to work. I suspect a similar situation in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other more densely populated cities, although this would apply more to those of us who work in the central business districts.

[Knorf]

@threeorange

I think this stigma is more pervasive in the less densely populated urban areas of the South and West.

I’m sure you’re right, but I was been astounded at a few people in locations well-serviced by rail who seem to believe it is a Constitutionally-guaranteed right that one should drive their own car, by themselves, free of delays at all times, to work everyday.

[Bobotheoptimist]

Between the War on Terror fiasco and the “stimulus” bills, the government has proven they can’t be trusted with our money. No way would I willingly give them another penny. If they promised everything I believe the government should do and said they needed slightly more money to reverse all the stuff I believe the government shouldn’t be doing, I still wouldn’t voluntarily give them any more money. If the gubmint needs money to enact some wonderful legislation, they can quit pissing away all our money on bullshit.

In my humble opinion.

[MichaelJohnBertrand]

@threeorange

I think this stigma is more pervasive in the less densely populated urban areas of the South and West. I take the Red Line el to work here in Chicago, and the majority of the people on the train with me are other middle class people on their way to work. I suspect a similar situation in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other more densely populated cities, although this would apply more to those of us who work in the central business districts.

You know, I think you’re probably right. I’ve encountered it most strongly in California, the car-craziest (heck craziest in general) state I’ve been to.

But we have it here in Vancouver, BC, Canada too. People cannot wait to get the money together to get a car so they won’t have to take mass transit any more.

And of course, we have HUGE traffic problems as a result. Everybody trying to get across the same bunch of bridges at the same time every morning and every evening, people glued to traffic reports on the radio, and everybody bitching and whining and growling at each other, and at the government, who is supposed to be able to just make all the other cars disappear, I guess, or make more highways magically appear overnight, so that there’s no delays, no diversions, no closures. You know, the same way they’re supposed to repair the roads too.

I think population density is the key here, but not just population density, but how long as the population density been that high, and during what parts of history. In Europe, they’ve had extremely high population densities for hundreds of years, so when the age of rail came along, and the age of big government projects, putting in massive mass transit made sense, and so it was done.

But someplace like the West Coast here hasn’t had that high a population density for that long, and so now everything is all built up around the assumption that everyone will have a car.

Food for thought. Off topic, but still. Hmmm.

[foolsguinea]

@Markxxx

I wouldn’t pay a dime more. I think we over pay as it is.

The problem is not enough money, there is plenty of money to go around. The problem is waste. When I look at the salaries of government workers and compare them to the level of similar workers it’s outrageous.

We have clerks making 40K or 50K a year, for jobs that should be about a buck more than minimum wage. The benefits packages are outrageous compared to business.

It’s only when you get into levels like The President of the US and compare to a CEO do you find the salaries start to reverse.

Most of your tax dollars are wasted.

I sympathize, but pay scales in the private sector vary immensely from region to region & business to business. To which standard should federal salaries be normed?

I think private sector employees should be better paid, not public sector employees worse paid. That’s not just political playing with words, but a part of serious economic concerns about most US workers being underpaid by historical standards.

[Uzi]

@silenus

I would be willing to pay substantially higher taxes if it would

1. Insure total transparency in government

2. Guarantee massive and immediate and unbelievably punitive penalties (to the point of being crimes against humanity)for any and all malfeasance in office

3. Bring about the total abandonment on the “War on Drugs”

4. Give us effective immigration policy coupled with airtight-when-necessary borders

I would also like a pony.

Hmmm, based upon your list a pony is the only thing you’d likely ever get. And that isn’t going to happen in any case.

For me:

1. Only if they supply me with a form at tax time where I could select where MY money goes. They get to choose what things they’d like it spent on, I get to allocate the money to each of them as I see fit. (I’d even settle for a choice in where half the money I pay in taxes goes.)

2. A limit on how high the taxes can ever go. eg. Out of all your income they can only ever take half your income. That applies to all levels of government. They seem to forget that there is only one taxpayer. And if a politician even suggests going higher than this, or violates this, then a super secret star chamber like organization will execute them in a most grisly and open way to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

[MichaelJohnBertrand]

@Uzi

Hmmm, based upon your list a pony is the only thing you’d likely ever get. And that isn’t going to happen in any case.

For me:

1. Only if they supply me with a form at tax time where I could select where MY money goes. They get to choose what things they’d like it spent on, I get to allocate the money to each of them as I see fit. (I’d even settle for a choice in where half the money I pay in taxes goes.)

2. A limit on how high the taxes can ever go. eg. Out of all your income they can only ever take half your income. That applies to all levels of government. They seem to forget that there is only one taxpayer. And if a politician even suggests going higher than this, or violates this, then a super secret star chamber like organization will execute them in a most grisly and open way to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Now now, be nice. I deliberately made this a wide open question. Whether or not you’re likely to ever see these things happen is completely outside the scope of this question. It’s just “what would you pay more for?”

1. I’ve thought of this too. Line item taxation. I would be very curious to see how that would turn out. although it would have to be phased in gradually. And it would basically mean that government would become a popularity contest. Agencies would be funded based on their popularity. I’m pretty sure that would result in some necessary but unpopular and unexciting, unsexy things getting vastly underfunded. while completely frivolous things get vastly overfunded. But people would learn over time.

who knows? It might turn out more or less the same over time.

2. I agree, it would be great to give people an absolute guarantee that their taxes will never go above a certain point. It would make people in higher income brackets a lot less nervous that the government will just take more and more and more until there’s nothing left.