At what income level should you pay taxes?

I stand corrected, you may well be beyond help...

 

Yes, bringing the poor up so that they have a chance to be something is better than bringing the rich down. He sounds like a great guy and the world is better because of him.

That is a problem we have been facing for awhile. America needs to lower the taxes to get them back here. It would create jobs and bring in more revenue. It is better to work for the benifits than to get it from a government that really does not produce any real wealth.

 

For a single person... 40k maybe. For a family more. If you have 3 kids and a spouse who doesn't work IMO you shouldn't be taxed until like 65k.

 

The only problem is...the rich have more money (and I am not against more money) and there is no incentive to create jobs.

Now if a company wants to build a factory or create jobs in the U.S. they should get generous tax breaks. If they employ people elsewhere or move companies overseas...they deserve no tax breaks...and in fact....should be taxed at a much higher rate.

 

would anyone object to a lowest tax bracket of 2% that includes everyone currently not taxed on income?

 

Yes, anyone would.

 

you would? why?

 

There is plenty of money in the US. The problem is that it is more profitable to deploy that money in market speculation than in business investment. More tax breaks for business will not change that, only much higher taxes on speculative capital gains will get the people with all the money to begin considering actual business investment as a viable option.

 

And why do you think that is?

 

As resources around the world grow more scarce, we can expect more of this type of trading, etc. The only alternative is a command economy and rationing.

Do we want that?

 

And why do you think that is?

 

Billions of people use resources, some of which are more finite than others. As these resources dwindle and make them more valuable, they will be hoarded and sold to the highest bidder. At some point the leftists will demand more authoritarian controls and "fair" distribution of resources.

 

Resources are not finite.

 

Yep, I would object to any arbitrary tax on EVERYONE for any reason. That is why I favor the FAIR tax, it is not arbitrary, it taxes those who spend on things beyond the necessities. If you have extra money to afford EXTRA things beyond basic living expenses, then you need to pay some tax. The more money you have to buy more things, the more tax........a FAIR tax.

 

Yes, resources are finite, there is only so much oil, so much gold, so much water, so much coal, and on and on. Even the energy from the sun is finite, since the sun will not exist forever.

Idiots want to use oil with no concern for the fact that it IS finite. We WILL run out of oil at some date. We should conserve it and other resources by using them for things other than burning.

 

But there are infinite ways to use them.

 

It is always interesting reading opinions that don't seem to grasp how the market works. "Market speculation" in corporations is reflective of a change in ownership of the corporation that was capitalized with stock investments to begin with. People act like money isn't being pumped into initial investments in corporations because that stock later changes hands but every dollar that is spent on stocks post IPO's is reflective of the massive amount of dollars that were initially pumped into the enterprised and economy by the initial IPO investments.

It's like some say, "The wealthy can invest in IPO's which capitalize the corporation but then people shouldn't be allowed to make a profit (or loss) from it by selling their stock investments." That is downright silly IMO.

Of note very few of the wealthy are "speculators" in the sense of being day-traders. Most invest in corporations for long term capital gains. While there are certainly some individuals that hover over daily stock prices trying to buy and sell on short term fluctuations in the stock prices this is more of a crap shoot than an investment and probably as many lose as gain from it. They are a relatively insignificant percentage of stock owners.

Where we see the most investment in capitalization of enterprises is in penny stocks. These generally relate to new start-ups and a person really needs to be on their toes with these investments. Generally they are about the potential of a corporation as opposed to investments in ownership of proven corporations which the wealthy might invest in. There are huge amounts of money that can be made from the right selection of penny-stocks and there are certainly investment strateties related to them. Of course a penny stock corporation can also go under and the investor loses their investment..... but no one likes to mention the losers when it comes to investing....

 

No, there are NOT infinite ways to use a limited resource. There may be a lot of ways, and burning them to non-existence is about as bad as I can imagine, but again,there are NOT an infinite number of ways to do ANYTHING. Please go look up the word 'infinite'.

 

Can you prove this assertion?

Oh, my bad. I meant transfinite.

 

I know a lot about how the markets work. For example, IPOs are only a tiny part of stock market activity, averaging around 0.003%. If you own shares in a company before it makes an IPO you are required to wait one year from the date of the IPO before you can sell your shares.

I also know this about markets, the market capitalization of a corporation often has very little relationship to the value of its assets or any sort of realization of its previous capital investments. For example, Sears market cap was far less than the value of the land it owned when it was last taken over.

Most investors trade through vehicles like mutual funds, hedge funds, and investment banks and other ventures where they let others day trade for them. Very few investors have a lot of their money in direct shareholding these days, even wealthy ones.

Companies gain capital from the equity markets only by selling shares that they own, all other market activity in their shares is basically irrelevant as far as providing the company with direct revenue.

Anyway, the point I was making has nothing to do with any of the above. In fact, the above is basically what the markets are supposed to do and many believe that it is all they do. Fair enough. I have nothing against that.

What I was pointing out was that the equity markets have gone beyond their purpose and become a purpose all their own due to a tax policy that favors indirect investment in companies through the equity markets over all other forms of investment. This has attracted much of the nations wealth into the equity markets.

A basic macroeconomic problem is that as a nations wealth flows into equity markets there is less money for everything else. If too much of a nations wealth gets attracted into the equity markets the rest of the economy will falter and decline even as the market continues to grow. This was a regular occurrence in the 1900s. They were called panics. They usually happened in the fall. There is a reason for that too.

There is a perception that equity markets are a two way street with equal volumes flowing in and out, this is a false perception. Equity markets suck up money from the economy when they are rising and destroy it when they fall. The only money that escapes this is money that is withdrawn from the market before its fall. An equity market fall is a mass destruction of wealth.

I fear that we are in such a position now. The failures of 2008 were just a mild indication of the underlying symptoms. The failure of the economy to grow is simple, a critical mass of the nations wealth that flowed into the equity markets was destroyed. The wider economy needs more money to grow but it is all tied up in the markets, unavailable for any other use unless people have some incentive to withdraw it.

A high capital gains tax will create that incentive. A high capital gains tax will require out sized gains from the equity markets to realize after tax income. Investors will seek more lucrative ways to deploy their money, like more direct investment in companies and placing their money in banks, which will then lend that money out and pay interest, which will be taxed at a lower rate as ordinary income. More money will become available for economic growth.

 

By definition an equity fund is predominately a mutual fund that invests in stocks. Virtually all of this money is invested in existing outstanding stock although some could be used to invest in new IPO's by a corporation. Most mutual funds are relatively stable without speculative day trading. They invest in premium corporations and generally leave those funds invested in those corporations.

Of course mutual funds are the number one investment vehicle for 401K and Roth IRA's for retirement plans of most Americans. To increase the tax is to diminsh the retirement accounts for the average American. Of note related to the 2008 recession by the end of 2009 these funds had basically recovered. There was a short term "paper loss" of assets but by 2010 401K's had recovered completely providing an 8% return on investment over ten years (2000-2010) so there wasn't really a loss of capital for investors.

Increasing the capital gains tax adversely affects average Americans which is what many seem to not understand.

 

What could possibly be more authoritarian than the government issued titles to natural resources?

"A right of property in movable things is admitted before the establishment of government. A separate property in lands not till after that establishment.... He who plants a field keeps possession of it till he has gathered the produce, after which one has as good a right as another to occupy it. Government must be established and laws provided, before lands can be separately appropriated and their owner protected in his possession. Till then the property is in the body of the nation." --Thomas Jefferson

"AFTER conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land.... In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms." --Albert J. Nock, Our Enemy the State

Land titles are just special rights issued by governments and without the governments authority and protection, those land titles are worthless. Before the introduction of government issued land titles, people could just use the land for free, it is only the authoritarian power of government which allows land to be hoarded. Your thinking couldn’t be more confused on this matter.

 

If you own a rare piece of art, like the Mona Lisa, you can hang that art in your bedroom, living room, kitchen or closet. There are many ways that you can use the Mona Lisa, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is only one Mona Lisa.

...

 

We might disagree on the numbers, and what qualifies as a necessity, but I could get behind a fair tax.

While my percent for the lowest bracket was arbitrary, my reason for the tax was not- it is that everyone in society deserves to be a full contributing member. My point was that no matter how small the tax, libs would not go for it because they think the government should be redistributing wealth to those people.

 

If i wanted to see jokes I would go to a joke site. Ignored