Well, we’re at an impass. Why don’t you open a GQ thread about whether you can determine whether a tax is progressive or regressive by only looking at the tax rates for income groups without knowing the actual income. I think you’ll be surprised at the answer. Enjoy.
Oh, and just FYI, I could have told your example was a flat tax w/o knowing the income. Because there’s only one rate. That makes it a flat tax by definition.
The impass is caused by your stubborness and my lack of natural glibness. It is you who would benefit from a GQ thread but let me try again first.
You say that we can judge by merit by looking at the stats: The top 1% pay 37.4% of the income taxes and bottom half pay 3.9%. I am saying that doesn’t tell us anything about the fairness of the tax structure because we don’t know how much income each group is paying taxes on.
I said that if the first group earned 10% of the income then the tax system would be progressive. It would most likely be progressive because they are paying a higher percentage of the taxes ( 37.4% ) than their share of of the income. That assumes that there we are dealing with a straightforward tax system. I didn’t specify so it is possible that the bottom 10% were paying the rest of the taxes and everyone in the middle was getting a free ride. But assuming there isn’t anything unusual the system is progressive.
On the other hand if the top 1% is taking in 95% of the income and only paying 37.4% of the tax then, again ignoring something unusual, that is a regressive tax scheme. The unlucky 99% who are making less money are stuck paying 62.6% of the tax on only 5% of the total income.
Hopefully that will clear things up for you.
Meanwhile, in OP related news:
Senate Approves Child Tax Credit in Lower Bracket
It makes one wonder what the recent leader of senate republicans says about poor folks in private. :rolleyes:
Interestingly, the Economist once did a really neat economic model whereby they basically constructed a world where every single person lived EXACTLY the same life, earning exactly the same incomes at each level of life, getting taxed at exactly the same rates, starting work, retiring, dying: everything all at the same age (and no inheritance: they spend all their money exactly by the time of death). As I remember, the only differences were that women didn’t work as much (raising kids). And of course, at any one time, there are people at all different levels of income purely by nature of being different ages (the longer you worked, the more you earned)
The neat thing was that, in this land called egalitaria where everyone lived exactly the same life, you could STILL construct scary sounding statistics about “such and such (tiny) percentage controls such and such (huge) percentage of the wealth” and “such and such (tiny) percentage pays such and such (huge) percentage of the total income taxes.”
I think that somewhat deflates the simplistic arguments of both those arguing that the rich are too rich and that the rich are overtaxed. The reality is, the percentages we use in those simplistic arguments are being wrongly judged against what we think would represent an equal outcome (the top 50% control 50% of the wealth): they SHOULD be judged against the percentages of something like egalitaria, where the lifetime conditions and treatment are exactly equal.
And I think that “egalitaria” it’s one of those unusual cases we can ignore. I mean, since it doesn’t exist and all. Yes, numbers can be manipulated. Notice I am complaining about John Mace doing just that. Also notice that no one here has complained that the rich are too rich.
Well, at least he voted for it rather than leaving the state and hiding out, right? I wonder if Libertarian politicians are more mature than your average elected republican or democrat… someone has to be. 
Actually, if he had been more “mature” he would have stood his ground and told the Dems to introduce a new Welfare bill if they wanted to hand out money to people who don’t pay taxes.
As has been pointed out to you those people do pay taxes.
I guess we can’t count on you being honest, huh?
I think you know he was talking about “Income Tax” and not any other type.
You sound like the one being dishonest to me.
Not income taxes, they don’t. How does one refund taxes that have never been paid?
Talk about lack of honesty.
For the original question…
the usual snobbery where the poor are perceived as unable to handle money…so make sure they only have enough for basics…and maybe not even for that. Pay them dirt wages for labor that is percieved beneath the ‘educated’, and make them grovel for necessities!! That’s been my experience.
So give the ‘rich’ tax breaks so they can have more vacations or more whatever, and they don’t use it to increase wages.
Child tax credits are given only to people with children, and in Canada the amount they get is based on their yearly income. I use the money to buy food, diapers, etc. Without we’d have even less food around. Having this money to spend at the grocery store helps stimulate the economy…goods are bought, people are paid…etc. Taking this money away and giving it to people who won’t use it at the grocery store won’t help anyone. If anything it will make things worse…the store will have less money to buy goods and pay employees…people get laid off, and less food/goods are bought by them now…
Know what I mean!!
I’ve seen enough sickening letters to the editor in my local paper about ‘parasite poor’ and people who ‘work harder’ shouldn’t have to waste money on the ‘lazy poor’ .
Yeah, that’s why the poor work 3 jobs to feed their family and still qualify for benefits…because they’re lazy…yeah right!!! Raise wages if you take away any ‘credits’. Then the tax breaks go where they belong…to the people who are working their buts off!!
Conflict of Interest,
The distinction was made plain and he ignored it. I feel perfectly justified in questioning his honesty. Perhaps it was a mistake. If he says so I will take him at his word. But I am certainly not about to apologise for questioning his honesty. He should know better.
If you or milroyj have any evidence that I am being dishonest in any way, by all means bring it forth. If not I would hope you would have the decency to retract your bald accusations.
2sense has been extremely patient in explaining this and I can’t figure out where you are getting tripped up. Are you under the misconception that the 37% and 3.9% numbers represent income tax rates (i.e., total tax paid divided by total income). Well, they don’t. They are income tax share data, as in the top 1% pay 37% of the total share of income taxes paid. As such, they convolve income tax rates with inequality in income in such a way that they are fairly meaningless (at least as far as discussing progressivity) without the context of income share data.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, the reason they pay such a high share has to do in large part to the fact that they receive such a huge share of the income earned, coupled with the progressivity of the federal income tax…which is more progressive than any other major tax we have (except the slated-to-be-phased-out “gift and estate tax”).
All of the people in question do pay SS tax. Most do not pay income tax.
SS tax is regressive, by the common definition of that term, since anyone making more than the cutoff will pay a lower average rate.
Income taxes in the US are not regressive, they are progressive, by the common definition of that term.
Since you do end up receiving a benefit in old age from the SS tax, I think it is not useful to lump that tax into a “total tax” calcualtion to determine if the “total tax” is regressive or progressive. You can make some actuarial assumptions about how much money someone will get back, but that calculation is more than I would want to attempt. If someone wants to do that, then I’d be happy to look at the numbers.
And if you want to lump in sales tax and state income tax, go ahead and do the calculation for all 50 states (and whatever metro regions, like NY, also have their own income tax) and compare the “total tax” state by state, region by region. Again, that’s more math than I want to do.
Sales taxes tend to be regressive, but they don’t have to be. It’s dependent to a large degree on lifestyle. And some states have no sales tax at all.
State income taxes are progressive. And a few states don’t have income tax at all.
To talk about an "average’ across the country is a fairly meaningless number. Too much variation.
And, once again, I think it is unrealistic for the feds to set their tax policy according to what the states do. There is simply too much variation state to state. Not to mention the fact that any given state may change it’s tax rate structure from year to year. It does make sense for the states to sync up their tax policy with the feds, as some do. Not many, but some.
And furthermore, the Republicans do not hate the poor.
Ok, but we still have Medicare tax, excise taxes, and gasoline tax, all of which are definitely not progressive. I think it is disengenious to talk about income tax without including the other federal taxes into the mix.
John Mace,
I’m sure you do find it useful to ignore SS taxes. Nonetheless “total taxes” means “total taxes”. If you mean something else then say something else. If you don’t you are a liar and people could call you on it.
Conflict of Interest and milroyj,
Are you gonna get your asses back in here and take responsibility for your words or are you content to leave your credibility laying there in tatters on the floor or what?
Now you’ve hurt my feelings.
I’m not going to play with you anymore!