Paying a "fair share"

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by FrankCapua, Apr 12, 2015.

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  1. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If Obama were responsible for the special low tax rates for the privileged, you'd have a point. Your ire is misdirected.
     
  2. NothingSacred

    NothingSacred Active Member

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    Sure, if they followed all the tax laws. They'd be idiots if they didn't use any loophole or tactic than any hedgefund manager would use to avoid paying any penny above the minimum they could owe by law.
     
  3. BleedingHeadKen

    BleedingHeadKen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Maybe the guy earning $10k lives rent free, and the guy earning $100k takes care of his family and relatives.
     
  4. Turtledude

    Turtledude Well-Known Member Donor

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    IN ALL FAIRNESS people making half of what Obama does are not paying an effective rate of 36%, they might well be paying a marginal rate of 36% but to pay an effective rate of 36% you are going to be making way more than 200K
     
  5. Bow To The Robots

    Bow To The Robots Banned at Members Request

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    True but missing the point: The president is a hypocrite.
     
  6. k995

    k995 Well-Known Member

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    What does that matter? Or do you think rent is the only thing you need to live?

    The fact remains that on the one hand the 10% tax will barely be felt by the guy making 100k and the same 10% be put a serious dent in the budget of the guy making 10k.
     
  7. k995

    k995 Well-Known Member

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    No he is not, not in this case at least. If he would veto increasing taxes on his income bracket while stating he would do the reverse, then yes. Here : nope .
     
  8. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    For comparative purposes the top 400 income earners in America, all with incomes in excess of $250 million/yr, pay an average tax rate of 17% which is about the same tax rate paid by workers with a $90,000/yr income.
     
  9. Til the Last Drop

    Til the Last Drop Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not to the person with only a 100 in their pocket. If it makes you feel better, social security is inherently more beneficial to the top with a cap on it. People with more money already tend to live longer, healthier lives. The best food and medicine money can buy. Not to mention, retirements stacked on in a day and age where the great majority won't know what it is to have one. 70k from someone who will make a million in their lifetime is far more than someone who will make 30 million in their lifetime. If you're a skilled worker or small business owner, I apologize. You all are bank rolling the nation and getting screwed while doing it. But I assure you, you are still 10xs better off than the psychologically damaged 50% that are the working poor. But only until the skilled workers and small business owners realize that they are closer to the working poor than the top will things change. We are all being pimped.
     
  10. Sanskrit

    Sanskrit Well-Known Member

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    Anyone interested in a -full- picture, devoid of out-of-context LW union label slant focusing only on the 1%, .001%, "top 400 incomes," should spend some time reading this excellent, nonpartisan blogger and especially the IRS data he compiles in the table in this entry:

    http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/

    Of note is that the top 1% earn about $380k, earn 20% of AGI, pay 38% of all federal income tax, with an average effective tax rate of 23%. There are about 1.4 million of these folks, which makes them .under .4% of the population. A reasonable extrapolation would be that when taxes at all levels are included, they pay 33-40% of their working lives in taxes.

    The questions we should be asking are "what is the bare minimum of funding government should receive to competently do its job?" and "why is government unable to live within its means?"

    Analyzing rational tax policy and fairness in the US doesn't come from what one person paid in one year. That kind of fallacious resentment appeal helps no one. Only when necessary context is applied can the grounding for reasonable tax policy be formed, yet one side steadfastly REFUSES to have a rational discussion on taxes, preferring instead to pour forth endless soundbite advertisements designed to buy resentment-based votes from people who pay little in taxes.

    Another excellent point he makes is that one of the main reasons people earn more in the US is that they work more hours.
     
  11. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    But that just leads to the next question: What is the federal government's job?

    If you look at the constitution, you will see the government's powers listed in Article I, section 8: coin money, establish weights and measures, build post roads and post offices, keep commerce among the states regular, provide a military umbrella to protect the states, etc. Some of these jobs, such as coining money and operating post roads and post offices, could be funded by user fees and require no general tax revenues.

    However, if one arbitrarily assigns other unconstitutional jobs to the federal government, such as redistributing income, then the amount of money necessary to accomplish that job is essentially limitless.
     
  12. FireBreather

    FireBreather Banned

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    So? You're comparing apples and grenades. The money that they built an investment portfolio with was partly built on wages - taxed at the wage rate.

    You're whining that money that was invested - that creates great returns - isn't being taxed at the same rate.

    And you have no idea why it is a bad idea to increase taxes on a behavior which results in economic stimulus.

    REAL economic stimulus: private entrepreneurs and investors taking chances with their after-tax money in the hopes of great returns. They're taxed at a lower rate because to do otherwise suppresses the desire to risk it with which to begin.

    This is fundamental, but the average liberal doesn't care, and doesn't want to care. They just want to be able to dole out more money to stupid and harmful programs to continue to build a dependence class and assure more votes.

    How many lives liberals ruin by sucking dry the potential of millions through an addiction to laziness and an expectation of the next Government funded meal. How pathetic and stupid.

    :mad:
     
  13. FireBreather

    FireBreather Banned

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    I didn't know mathematics had cultural exceptions. Your point is absolutely wrong, but I know why you said it.

    You seem like you want to condone the idea that if a person has only $100, they shouldn't be taxed - or taxed less.

    Here's a revelation: they would be taxed less. They only have $100 to tax in the first place!

    Unless people face what they've already discounted, we're not going to fix this problem. The first dollar should be treated like the last dollar; to do otherwise injects this insipid notion of 'fairness', and with it the camel's nose of elitists who think they know better than everyone else.

    And thus the problem continues to manifest. I'll wager you this: if our economy shifted to treating every dollar equally - taxing every dollar the same percentage - then the cost of living in the economy will likewise shift, having realized that the supposed 'reduced amount' of available cash for the guy with his $100 results in downward pressure on prices.

    And the resulting increase in economic productive makes up for his lesser net income with greater opportunities. But liberalism has worked very hard to decimate all these core ideas, obfuscating facts with rank fiction, so much so that the average person cannot even begin to bring themselves to realize what is actually true and what would actually work anymore.

    And so we are treated to yet another politician claiming yet again that they're "for the working guy", while doing nothing substantive to actually change the working guy's station in life.

    Shell game. Challenge 100 year old conventions; fix the problem.

    That makes me feel better? Why? Social Security robs people who know how to invest their OWN money. Social Security robs EVERYONE, in fact, by providing failure level rates of return FAR below the systemic level of inflation built into our economy by Keynesianism.

    Social Security is pure Government robbery.

    All true, and also true - but not mentioned by you - is that people with more money tended to have better habits with which to collect more money. More discipline; not as many vices (drinking/drugs/etc); work ethic and desire to get a better education, etc.

    All the things that make quality people...quality people. Of course they're going to live longer.

    You're falling into the liberal relativism crap, and it is the Slough of Despond from which there is no escape. There is no justification for increasing a PERCENTAGE paid simply because someone earns more. The whole beauty of a FLAT PERCENTAGE is that increases proportionately ON. ITS. OWN.

    I am both, but your apology rings hollow, because your ideology wishes to trap me in it as much as the boogeymen against which you rail.

    More traps for you. I was poor. More poor than most on this board. I created my own opportunities by eschewing the pitfalls that others did not - but that doesn't mean that there weren't missteps and mistakes along the way that derailed me. We reap what we sow.

    No, what will make things change is when you release all the ill-focused crap I pointed out in your screed. We need to shrink Government, and on no planet - and in no reality - will that ever happen by increasing taxes on ANYONE, PARTICULARLY the rich, who will immediately turn around and force Government to grant them favors, having just been given tremendous motivation to do so by your misguided impression that increasing taxes on them is somehow good for us.
     
  14. Johnny-C

    Johnny-C Well-Known Member

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    When do billionaires "sweat", besides when they might want to?

    Seems to me, virtually everyone in the middle class deserves a damned (tax) break. And yes, let the most wealthy pay for it.
     
  15. perotista

    perotista Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am not worried about billionaires. What they make does not keep me up at night worrying about them. Besides most billionaires do not take or classify what they make as income to be taxed as income taxes. If they do they have hired a bunch of bad CPA's and tax attorneys.

    Most have assets beyond wild expectations. Very little cash and what they own or have invested makes them billionaires. Not the money in the bank.
     
  16. Johnny-C

    Johnny-C Well-Known Member

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    Okay. Then 'tax' their 'worth'.

    The reality is that the poor and middle class are not about 'money'... they are about 'labor'.

    And just as wealth is somehow respected and appreciated, so 'work' should be. Workers (consumers) are not actually beneath those who are wealthy, they are what hold the wealthy UP. So many people miss that reality.
     
  17. Turtledude

    Turtledude Well-Known Member Donor

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    oh we agree completely on that
     
  18. FireBreather

    FireBreather Banned

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    How does allowing the Government to increase the amount it collects in taxes somehow DECREASE the amount of influence and control the Government can exert?
     
  19. perotista

    perotista Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Exactly, the poor and middle class is about labor. Hence what Thomas Jefferson said about "Man should not be taxed on the sweat of his brow." The income tax is very unfair in doing this. Those with money play with money to make more money. That is called Capital gains and not income and is taxed under Capital gains not income tax. Then there is investments in land and other stuff which is not taxed as income.

    For those who think raising the top rate or bracket on the income tax will make them pay more are usually mistaken. Raising the top rate just makes those with money rethink their tax strategy. To put their money into other things, to take it out of the income category into something else.

    I personally do not think Labor/wages should be taxed at all.
     
  20. Sanskrit

    Sanskrit Well-Known Member

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    Well, that's a humongous topic for another thread. At some point in time, in the early 20th century, we became a "planning/welfare/social engineering state" as opposed to an "enumerated powers state." This is a natural consequence of a more pure democratic voting franchise. A large percentage of the voters, and a heavy skew of female voters, envision government as a legitimate provider of goods and services to the citizenry. These voters are the type to appeal to government to "do something" to fix social problems and engineer society. IMO they have a very naïve view of human and government history, and little understanding of the constitutional republic and most importantly WHY that beautiful creation developed. They would be just as happy under a dictator or monarch as in a constitutional republic, provided they felt like government was taking care of them.

    On the other side are folks who believe that voluntary markets, strong property rights, limited government, despite their flaws, are far more beneficial to any given populace than fiat power exercised over them, particularly central, one-size-fits-all fiat power. They would rather live in a society containing injustice in the interim, and wait for the markets and prevailing culture to rectify such, than give power of enacting expediencies over to a central sovereign. They believe that almost all government action is a necessary evil, and usually counterproductive in the long run as well.

    The lines form up generally between the private sector on the one hand, and an alliance of an indirectly dependent gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-lawyer-MSM Complex and direct government dependents on the other, with some overlap and outliers.
     
  21. Johnny-C

    Johnny-C Well-Known Member

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    How are things going to be paid for?

    Workers and the poor don't have the 'money'. So, who pays it?!
     
  22. Johnny-C

    Johnny-C Well-Known Member

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    Unless we stop having a society/government... SOMEONE must pay for it.

    In reality, all should pay and those who benefit from the structure of the society more, should pay more.

    It's not perfect, but it's realistic.

    Otherwise, we can all go back to sheds or caves (and not have a society or government).
     
  23. Bow To The Robots

    Bow To The Robots Banned at Members Request

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    taking advantage of a system you purport to oppose is the height of hypocrisy.
     
  24. Til the Last Drop

    Til the Last Drop Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What the heck are you talking about?

    1. Not a leftist.
    2. Assumptions are the mother of all...............
    3. Anyone who had ever truly been poor would know what I was saying, but nice try.
    4. If we both disagree with Social Security, what would be the point in wanting to argue the motivations if we have the same desired results = that SS is a joke?

    In the end, I appreciate your zeal. But when you assume the other person has hidden motivations, that you know what they are, and then rant against them - you make yourself look nuts at worst, and are wasting your time at best. You could have just asked. I am center. Rightists will assume I'm a leftist, leftists will assume I'm a rightist. It's what happens when one thinks for themselves. And know this, those like me are the future. The brainwashed cult of the global pipe dream is at its end. Those claiming to be capitalists while supporting a system dictated through central bankers. The kid who thinks he's a leftist while being told to support free trade, something that only benefits the top brackets. Everybody hating everybody, so long as their mantras push globalism into more and more of the only option we're allowed to take seriously. Left vs right is a joke, my friend. There is only nationalism vs globalism on the table. Start making it the subject you talk about - even if just for fun - and watch how quickly everything blurs. There is no right. There is no left. There is only nationalism vs globalism.
     
  25. FireBreather

    FireBreather Banned

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    I notice you didn't answer my question. You'll get your answers when you first answer mine, as respectful debaters are wont to do.
     
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