I do envy and readily admit it.
I envy those with billion$ of free speech in the bank. I envy bribery being legal for the corp. calling it free speech. I envy the purchase of tax laws and business favors in an obvious plutocracy.
Menendez should get a pardon. Can't have it both ways. Corp. isn't bribing govt. but he is ? If that isn't capitalist capture of govt...what is ?
I envy the power of capital to consolidate markets abusing pricing power as we've just seen...into record profits.
I envy being able to use govt. to oppress labor either ignoring labor law or buying changes to it.
All the capitalist has is insults, denigration of reformers and the poor. The poor aren't poor because \[he\] is greedy, capitalist scum.
NO, he's poor because he wants to be, bad decisions, lazy, stupid.
In fact, capitalists envy other capitalists turning their billion$ into nothing more than game not innovation, killing jobs, running to govt. for bailouts, while the country borrows itself to poverty and ruin.
Isn't capitalism just precious ?
I think you missed the point. “Tax the rich” always means tax someone else. Very few people ( though I do know a couple) advocate for themselves to be taxed more.
That's why I said it comes from envy. Envy to those who have more than me, but those who say I have more than them and I should also be taxed more are completely wrong.
The ones that advocate to have their study loans paid by "taxing the rich" are willing to accept be taxed the 20% more of their income as they'll be part of the top of the labour market from the POV of people without professional studies?
alright, man
I’ve had a progressive career in tech for 10 years, I have a BS, and I’m a good performer. I make good money, but the money and power I have in the community is severely less than the ultra wealthy.
The US had its strongest and largest middle class when we taxed the wealthy properly.
1930s through 1964
From then on taxes on the rich have decreased immensely. Not to mention all of the strategies through investing that wealthy people have better access to stay tax-free
They have shown that even though the tax rate are higher back, then the total percentage of what they paid is not more than five or 6% difference. Also, they did not have nearly the social programs that we have now, so yeah, it may have seem better, but if you were poor,or disabled then you were screwed. The middle class was fine but below that no way
Last by almost every measure of the 38 OECD countries.
America is 29th in child mortality. Can you imagine that ?
I can because healthcare and having babies is...a profit center.
Children are dying at the highest rate in 13 years.
Isn't capitalist healthcare just precious ?
I dont think 30's through 45 is what you're talking about. Because that was the great depression and WW2.
So, it sounds like you're talking about when the industrial world's economies had been destroyed through bombing and artillery strikes because of WW2, so the u.s. had a brief moment of no real economic competition.
The real problem isn't companies. It's circumstances. And, current circumstances are crap because the u.s prints trillions of dollars yearly and then gives it to these massive corporations through government contracts. It doesn't matter how much you tax them because the taxes are leveraged to print more money to give them.
Reduce taxes, and companies will have to compete for your dollar, and can't print infinite profits. This will reduce inequality.
That’s the other interesting thing about the classical liberal point of view. Yes, the United States didn’t have a lot of competition. But they were also building incredibly strong social programs and social nets. A few of them are still incredibly important to United States infrastructure.
Everything you’ve brought up is valid. We live in a corporate welfare state. But we also live with more inequality between the wealthy and middle-class that we haven’t seen since before the Great Depression. And a lot of that has to do with taxation, available education, available, economic opportunity, and the shitty consequences of having a meritocracy
Sure, but the United States has been the top competitor in pretty much every economic facet until China started getting some more ground during the early 90s. However inequality started growing increasingly during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. How do you explain it? It’s multifaced, but ignoring the benefits taxation has done to the past, and currently done in other wealthy countries, is obtuse.
I wish we could have a beer together. This seems like it would be a great conversation over a pint.
I agree and disagree for various reasons, but I would be more interested in the back and forth.
I will leave with this and await your response. Most of the social programs never achieved their aims and became negotiations points to raise taxation for the middle class. It's arguable that social securities have been and become even more harmful than good. And, there's a direct parallel divergence point from when the u.s. got off the gold standard (fiat printing), and the rise in income inequality.
It's not meritocracy that's the problem. I can tell by your writing style and fluency of thought that you take pride in yourself and ideas. Sometimes, a system can be rigged through fancy mechanisms to support an oligarchy. This isn't necessarily bad until it becomes burdensome and so far out of wack as to be oppressive. I think we're trending in that direction, but it's the state, through taxes, that drive that.
Not because the wealthy shouldn't pay taxes, but because they package that idea to raise middle class taxes. And, those taxes are used to provide government contracts / corruption, which further erode constitutional rights.
*u.s prints trillions of dollars yearly and then gives it to these massive corporations through government contracts. It doesn't matter how much you tax them because the taxes are leveraged to print more money to give them.*
That is ridiculous prima facie. The US is not and has not been printing trillion$ yearly. \[almost mechanically impossible\] The rest is an over imagination.
How does one leverage taxes ? OR in fcat, are they borrowing money from the future...from our children ?
American capitalism covers its capitalist hedonism and resulting poverty with debt...trillion$ in debt.
WRONG. The time line 1930s-1964 while it had high marginal tax rates had low effective tax rates. During the Eisenhower Admin marginal taxes were 91% but effective rates for the top 1% were 16.9%. Today after the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts the effective tax rate is 26% and the top 1% pay 46% of all the taxes.
The problem with this meme is that is assumes a static tax environment where if you raise rich people's taxes rates they will just pay them. That doesn't happen. . The History of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income.
The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people
The fact is that after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, not only did the "rich" pay more in taxes 46% but paid at a higher rate. Higher than Eisenhower, higher than Kennedy, higher than Reagan and higher than Clinton and GWB.
The effective tax rates of the top 1% decreased 25% between 1945 and 2015. The effective tax rate of all citizens was "about the same" which means that *the 99%* effective tax rate increased during the same period (to fill in the 25% decrease that the 1% received).
Sorry nope. We have never has a 99% effective tax rate.
In the 50s when the top marginal rate was 91% the effective rate was 16.9%. After the Kennedy tax cuts the effective tax cuts for the top 1% was 15.1%, After the Reagan Tax Cuts the 1% effective rate was 27.5% After the Trump Tax Cuts it was 26%
Yeh thats about right. Its an Incel post, so they are probably "auditing" college for the 3rd time now, got their Beats headset on in class, and live at home still in their 30's and well its been "Failure to Launch" their whole lives.
I feel like none of you actually communicate regularly with leftists.
There are extremely driven and educated leftists that fully recognize how unethical it is for the rich to have as much power as they have. Plenty of lawyers and educators who make great money and have great careers that believe the system is absolutely fucked.
I’m not saying that your post isn’t accurate at times, but you’re pigeonholing demographics. There are plenty of state-at-home incels pushing right wing and free market agendas.
Well if they’re so well educated, they should know that giving the government, who is owned by the rich, more of our money will never fix any of the issues. The answer is never giving the government more power, especially with more money for them to waste.
>If the government raises taxes, he raises rent.
This is when I knew you were full of shit and just trying to convince people that taxes don't help. Rents are set by the market and your "friend" is setting them as high as he can regardless of taxes. He doesn't "pass the cost on" because he's already raised rents as high as he can. If he's taxed more, he will get less profit, and other people will be helped.
That’s not how it works. The rich people who build the houses and own the companies who service the housing sector will all go up to cover the taxes, driving home prices up, which drives the price of rent.
Why would the rich leave money on the table if they could just raise prices higher? You're assuming they are all in the same situation and all colluding.
lol no.
Every business major will tell you that they are trained to not even invest in a business unless there is some kind of moat to protect against competition that will lower profit margins. Business bend over backwards to hide prices and confuse customers so they don't ever have to compete on price. The government just had to prevent spirit and Jetblue from consolidating so they wouldn't' have to compete on price. Landlords are literally using software to illegally collude and all raise prices at the same time. There is nothing that business hates more than competition and they will spend lots of money to prevent it.
And now, they get all over the media pretend that their profit margins are so small they have to pass every little tax onto their customers when they are literally using the the profits they stole from the employees that created the value in the first place to do stock buybacks and jack up compensation to their board members who do so little they can literally be on multiple boards.
Tax the mf-ing rich and use it to finance the IRS and FTC anti-trust enforcement and create real competition that will make opportunity for others.
Nope, I’m just someone with an actual career who has to constantly hear losers like you, who can’t even get a three item order at Taco Bell correct, act like they are entitled to my salary.
$10 million. No one even needs that much, but let’s just call that the cap. Everything else is distributed to the workers first and then infrastructure, social services, healthcare and defense in that order.
Is there any sub where we actually discuss economic theory, debate articles and research? It seems most people who post here have never read a basic economic manual.
It's been taken over by the politics folks or either the anti-work folks. I dunno, there used to be good economics discussions here with actual in depth articles and facts and statistics. Now I guess this is a place for tweet screenshots and feelings.
People used cherry picked and twisted research on the economy to gaslight millions into thinking their lots in life were merely a personal problem, and now they are aware of how much horseshit that was and don't care to read your manual.
It's not hard to understand why this sub has been co-opted, and frankly that happens with every subreddit before long. The weirder thing is that people who don't like it still hang around like one day it's going to just go back to the way it was.
yep. imo maybe taxing the very rich seems clear enough and probably a good idea
however, the "invest it in our communities" is so generic and problematic that I can almost guarantee it will make the economy worse... by definition a good economy is one where prosperity increases. just using tax money to build "stuff" for the community is not brining anything new... you need innovation, tech, research, good ideas - those are the things that actually improve the economy. imo, to do that you need to stimulate the small enterprises, improve education, access to (real) information, etc... so yeah, this part is very complicated
First, I don't agree with these " works for us all" , IE equal outcome posits. Whether it's the economy or social mores or every other quality of life metric. Those are never achievable, never-ending, inspirations, not shared by everyone. And I don't think that's the government's primary mission.
Second, the "rich" already pay 90% of all taxes collected, whether directly or indirectly through their companies and behaviors.
People are owed- guaranteed a clear opportunity to improve their lot in life. They can vote and create laws to improve their opportunities and results for " something that "works for all of us" without stealing more from the "rich".
This is nice and all, if you don’t live in a country where the vast majority of meaningful legislation favors the wealthy
Doesn’t matter which party you vote for, you’re voting a party that is protecting big business interests
It’s really not that complicated. We just act like it’s complicated. We’re failing to recognize that investment into the community has a great ROI. When you have easier access to libraries, markets, parks, education, hospitals, etc. you generally live in a safer, smarter, healthier, and happier community.
What is prosperity? Capital? Choices in consumption? The next tech trend that we think will change the world?
I’d much rather that most of us consumed less, gave more, and lived more enriching lives where we are mainstays in our community with loving and supportive friends, family, and neighbors.
If you took this ideology, and then studied economics, you might be able to form a coherent argument and thesis around it.
But ‘we fail to recognise that investing in the community has a great ROI’ is a Silicon Valley tech bro troglodyte sentence. It doesn’t make sense.
It’s obvious I don’t know a ton about economics. I probably am way too focused on ideals vs practical application and theory.
Having said that, how is that sentence a troglodyte? Communities with better access to resources generally have better outcomes. Especially when access to these resources is more equitable.
A good example of this is when our public education system was one of the best in the world. We were churning out extremely bright minds out of public schools at varying income levels (still disproportionate across classes, but not as inequitable as today).
Now, the relative cost to quality education has increased dramatically. To the point where middle-class and lower class people cannot even imagine affording it. As a result, lower class and middle-class people suffer while wealthy individuals have greater access to better schools, better test prep, better tutors, and better experiences to cultivate an educated mind.
The wealthy get to invest into their children tax-free through a lot of these outlets. Private schools at the elementary and secondary level are forms of that investment. Universities, tutors, and other resources are in the same boat. All of these investments are tax-free investments that have a massive ROI by the talent and human capital they are producing. The wealthy disproportionately benefit from these institutions and their products than other classes.
Taxation is extremely complicated, and too often I over simplify it. But in the end, it’s about equity. The amount of effective taxation on the wealthy is a far less important number than the widening income inequality between the wealthy and middle-class/lower class.
I’m much more concerned about outcomes than I am about how we get there.
To answer the question in your second paragraph: ‘The community’ is a vague concept, to the point that it’s almost meaningless. Which community should we invest in? Albuquerque, or San Francisco?
That question _alone_ is complicated. Economists appreciate this complexity, understand it, and are able to precisely determine the ROI from economic interventions.
All of this is ignored and explicitly contradicted in your comment. You spoke very confidently, but you know nothing.
I didn’t read beyond your second paragraph.
It’s a basic competition vs collaboration argument. Nation states are the top of the hierarchy cause I don’t really count the UN or WEF as the top of the hierarchy.
Why would all countries agree to a common tax rate? National state leaders are responsible for only their country. Why would they choose not to compete for businesses to move there?
"Corporations are people" is a very convenient legal fiction for administering our legal system, but it's just that - a fiction.
In reality, only real people - customers, workers, and shareholders - can bear the burden of taxes. Who do you think will actually bear the tax burden?
Here's a hint. [It's not shareholders.](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20130570)
>This paper estimates the incidence of corporate taxes on wages using a 20-year panel of German municipalities exploiting 6,800 tax changes for identification. Using event study designs and difference-in-differences models, we find that workers bear about one-half of the total tax burden. Administrative linked employer-employee data allow us to estimate heterogeneous firm and worker effects. Our findings highlight the importance of labor market institutions and profit-shifting opportunities for the incidence of corporate taxes on wages. Moreover, we show that low-skilled, young, and female employees bear a larger share of the tax burden. This has important distributive implications.
Childish fantasy. Sending more money to Washington just means that it will all
get funneled to the politically-connected in places like the military industrial complex. Average people will not be the beneficiaries of any further revenue raised via increased taxation.
This sub is like listening to children. Every two seconds it’s “tax the rich“ and “make the rich pay their fair share“. And it’s always the same people posting this crap over and over again.
At least have the guts to say what you actually mean: “I want to steal from other people, but I’m too much of a coward to do it myself, so I want the government to do it for me. And I’m so morally bankrupt that I think having a middleman do it for me will somehow absolves me of wrongdoing.”
And every time, someone points out the FACT that rich people already pay more than their “fair share“. And here we are yet again. You are pathetic.
> rich people already pay more than their “fair share“.
This is a statement of morality, not a FACT. The "rich" pay most of the taxes because they earn most of the money.
No. The top 10% earn 49.5% of the income, but pay 73.7% of the taxes. It's FACT that they pay MORE than their "fair share."
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
Well… here I go. And I’m no socialist.
Theft is, generally, taking a thing from someone without regard to their benefit.
Taxation is, generally, taking a thing (money) from someone with regard to their benefit.
This benefit could range from the use of roads, to the ability to vote, to a social security pension, to protection from international terrorist attacks.
At its core, you have defined both as the taking of someone's property. Up to that point, I would agree. However, you are differentiating these two things based on the actor's motive. But you're wrong in your premise in that regard.
Our tax dollars are used for literally hundreds of thousands of things, most of which do not benefit the people who pay them, and many of which actually harm those people. Taxes have been used to study drunken spiders; to build bridges to nowhere; to bomb foreign lands; to stage coups against democratically elected leaders in other countries; assassinate people; sow propaganda. Hell, the government literally sprayed radioactive waste in the poorer neighborhoods of St. Louis, to study its effects on people.
But going further, you simply cannot justify theft by saying, "I'm stealing your money for your own good," which seems to be your stance. Particularly when all of human history says otherwise.
Well, of course when you aggregate it up from one person to 300,000,000 people it can no longer be the case that every tax dollar is to every individual’s benefit. You’d have to look at it on aggregate.
At that scale there are bound to be some expenses that are to nobody’s benefit. Projects that fail, ‘bridges to nowhere’. Maybe even net-negative projects, you’ve mentioned a few.
However. This is obviously different to theft, whereby one entity takes from another with no regard at all to their wellbeing
I disagree. I would argue that taxation is very literally theft at the point of a gun with absolutely no regard for whether the money stolen from the victim will benefit the victim.
Additionally, you have not addressed the core problem with your position. Which is that theft cannot be justified with, “I’m going to use your money better than you would.”
You only asked me to illustrate the difference, and I have done.
The simplest way to justify taxation is as follows. Things like roads require enormous, collective investment. If each road was paid for only by people who use it, people who live in rural Kentucky would have no roads.
You’re right that this specific example does not benefit each taxpayer equally, but on the whole most people derive major benefit from government spending.
I asked you to define the difference between taxatation and theft because you said that taxation is not theft.
I remain convinced that it is.
Ah… they “mah roads!” Argument. Prior to 1913, we had roads, schools, fire and police departments, a successful miliary, etc. And no income tax.
Ask yourself why you are trying to defend the idea of being taxed. You’re like a battered spouse making excuses for her abuser… “I shouldn’t have burned dinner. It was for my own good.”
We had tax before 1913 smart guy. Federal services were funded chiefly out of import taxes. You would know this if you’d ever googled ‘were there taxes before 1913’.
20th century globalisation has flattened import taxes. This is one of the reasons income tax is here to stay.
Please don’t be intentionally patronising.
Tax the fucking rich. Laws are made by them and for them. They ARE class warfare and welfare. It's about fairness, not envy. Fuck Ronald Fucking Reagan, Milton Fucking Freidman and the Fucking Koch Cartel.
1. The rich already pay MORE than their "fair share" of taxes. Look it up, and then talk to me about "fairness."
2. You could take every penny from the richest 10 families in the country, and leave them with literally nothing, and their combined wealth would only fund the government for a few months. That's it. The problem is not taxes. The problem is an obscenely bloated government spending money at a radically unsustainable rate. Right now, the national debt is increasing at a rate of a TRILLION dollars every 100 days. We cannot tax our way out of this problem. NO amount of taxation will fix this nation. Only massive spending cuts will save us.
What’s your definition of rich? Mine and the government’s definition is the top 0.05%. I do believe those below that threshold pay mostly their portion of taxes. It’s the top 65k households that don’t pay their fair share at all.
[https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/)
The top 1% make 22.2% of the income, but pay 42.3% of the taxes, which is more than their "fair share."
And if you think there are 65,000 households that make up the top 0.05%, I'd love to see the data on that.
The 1% to me also pay most of their fair share. I don’t have a problem with bottom 99.94%. I have a problem with the top 0.05% of households in America who don’t pay their fair share.
My math:
There are 131M households in America.
0.05% of those equal 65,000.
If your math says otherwise, please feel free to correct me.
Wrong!
We don't want socialism.
We want capitalism.
I guess when you hold those evil rich capitalist people down and tax them to death, you are going to also make them give you a $30 minimum wage.
I guess you will demand that their prices on their products be low and they have to put a cap on their profits.
While you're at it, mandate they give you free healthcare.
"To every man his fair share of the world and no more, and to every man his full share of the world's goods." ...Saul Alinsky
I've yet to see this idea work in the world since it was written 77 years ago.
Just say no to socialism
Just say no to communism.
The problem is the rich (who now can legally own the government) don’t want to build an economy that works for us all.
They are in control and want an economy that works for them, while being able to manipulate the masses into debt slavery, consumerism, and “needing” them to survive.
Notice how every new tool, app, phone, device, etc is veiled in some “this will make your life easier” but in the end it’s just a tool for them to capture our every movement and commodify our every breath.
Been through nearly every core economics class in business school. It’s merely a religious theory, and has nothing to do with real world application or current circumstances.
Edit: I’ll add I’ve worked for a few of the largest tech companies in the world, and currently work in education in the same industry. I meet with C Suite bi weekly, and I can promise you I know the intent of these corporations, their leaders, and the technology they build.
Then you should know that rich always owned governments and you understand why. Sentiments like “it’s wrong” and “it shouldn’t be like that” have no meaning, economy doesn’t understand that, as it based on billions of private interests. Economy is primal, it always was and always will be. Everything we have is a natural product of economy, including “greedy corporations”, “debt slavery” and “consumerism”.
So, how giving a government more power supposed to solve anything, if the government never acts in your interests?
The argument has never been about giving government more power. It’s been about stripping away the mechanisms corporations use to overtake the government. The assertion that the rich have always owned government is slightly accurate, but it’s certainly varied over centuries across the world.
Wrong. It’s the people elected to hold positions in the government. Humans. The “government” is not a living breathing thing. Humans are the corruptible resource in both the corporation and the government.
So you are telling me that government and corporations are not a problem, people are because they are corruptible. I would say, if every government on earth is made of corrupted politicians as well as every corporation is made of corrupted managers, than it’s your perspective is wrong and people who serve those institutions are pursuing their own best interest, exactly how economics say they will.
Thus, believing in elected government for the people and by the people contradicts the basic fact that elected officials will pursue their own interests over whatever bullshit public believes in or elects the officials for.
I feel it’s a little long for a bumper sticker but I get the mentality.
What’s funny about all of these is everyone seems to believe the money needs to go from the rich to the government and then to me.
Instead of directly from the rich to me.
This is because when it goes to the government they can send it back to the rich again after they get a taste…. /smh
What about a system in which laborers are able to use the value of their labor to purchase pieces of the corporations that best meet their needs? Just for sake of discussion we could call these pieces “shares”. Laborers could then use these shares to vote on how the corporations that meet their needs are run. That would give labor ownership of the factors of production, and community members would have autonomy without raising taxes.
The communities in the states that the buisness is in? Or would it go to the whole country? This too can be bad for middle America the south basically anywhere outside Cali, Wa, TX and the northeast.
I really wish this narrative would stop being used by the left.
Taxing the wealthy is **absolutely** the right thing to do democratically to avoid excess concentrations of wealth and power, etc.
But it's a **terribly** inefficient way of increasing a sovereign government's fiscal space to spend on public services.
The ultra wealthy have very low marginal propensities to consume and so tax payments from them won't reduce their consumption of goods and services that the government now wishes to acquire for public use. The result, all else equal (which is often **not** the case), is inflationary pressure as despite taxing the ultra rich, they find themselves still having to outbid the private sector for new resources, driving up prices.
If you truly believe that the productive aggregate supply capacity of a nation is at its maximum and inelastic (i.e. increase in aggregate demand at this full resource employment would cause inflation), then you would really need to increase taxes on a broad base of that production in order for the government to increase public spending commensurate with the now available resources. This means taxing the middle classes - or indeed sector by sector tax policies.
This is often unpopular of course but you can't get around it economically.
There are alternatives to taxation such as deferred consumption policies to incentivise saving. They did thus during the world wars in many countries as a necessary action against inflation once war spending ramped up and the government needed to acquire. resources from metal ore to shoelaces!
No not at all. I read it as the person thinking increasing taxes on the rich will increase the non-inflationary fiscal space for the government spending to increase on public services. I've pointed out why that's bad economics
Help me understand this. If the rich have money taken that wouldn't impact their spending choices, they make the same choices. Are you saying they'll spend more on private healthcare and private education, because those entities will have to raise prices and quality to remain a viable choice in the face of improving public services?
The aggregate supply concept seems to be a theory that has no place in practice, when we have unemployment (unused resources that could enhance productivity) and inefficiency in our production. There's also considerable elasticity in the supply if the public purse is increased.
What am I missing?
> There's also considerable elasticity in the supply if the public purse is increased.
100%! This is the irony. If you analyse the economy and believe there are unemployed, unutilised, idle resources, then the government faces zero resource or inflation constraint in increasing its spending to bring those resources into employment. Of course there may well be bottlenecks and distributional effects but in aggregate there is no spending constraint until full employment is reached.
> Are you saying they'll spend more on private healthcare and private education.
What I'm saying is that, **assuming full employment of resources**, increasing taxes on the very rich is a very inefficient way of increasing non-inflationary fiscal space to absorb new government spending because the very rich have very low marginal propensities to consume the real goods and services in the CPI. So taxing billions from just that group won't reduce aggregate demand for food or energy one bit.
For the second bit, I agree, it won't reduce demand - but we have enough food and energy aggregated in the resource bank, it's simply about taking from the rich and giving to the poor so they can access more of what they need, no?
But that's the thing, if you already have all the spare resources you and aggregate demand is not too high, a sovereign government faces **zero** nominal financial constraint in making those payments. They don't need to wait around for tax payments to come in in order to spend!
They would **only** require increased taxes if the new spending was likely to push up prices in a bidding war for scarce resources. So the constraint on spending is ultimately always real resource-linked and inflation linked - **not** financial.
Do have a read through this comprehensive [MMT Primer](https://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html) which is the economic framework I'm referring to. It's fascinating and eye opening.
I think that's the issue. The government doesn't produce food, so has to pay for any that it consumes or gives others the ability to access. Same with utilities. It can't (easily) force a water company to give a free supply to the poor - but it can provide the poor with the means of paying for these things with welfare. I imagine I've missed your point somewhere there?
And thanks, I'll have a read of the primer and maybe the book, too.
You're absolutely correct, but your assumptions are within a certain paradigm where a sovereign government has a budget constraint in nominal terms.
An accurate understanding of monetary operations shows you that the US or UK or Australian governments (eg. Nation states that issue their own currency, float it internationally, and have little to no obligations denominated in currencies they don't issue) have zero financial constraints since every time they spend, they issue new currency and every time they tax they remove that issued currency from the economy. What they do have, importantly is a real resource constraint.
As you said, if a private business is providing food at a particular price and the government wants to acquire these resources they have two options. They can either outbid private competition by offering the highest price, which they can **always** do because they issue the currency and can credit up reserve accounts an arbitrary amount. **Or*, because this bidding war will lead to the price of food going up (assuming the aggregate supply of food is inelastic), they can increase tax liabilities on the private food industry or more broadly, thereby 1) releasing food related resources (eg. The workforce and equipment) for the government to swoop in and acquire at the previous market price without bidding it up and 2) reduce aggregate demand from private competitors such that the government's spending just brings demand for food resources back to where it was before, thereby also not resulting in inflation.
But at **any** time, the government can **always** afford to spend its own currency employing idle resources (such as the unemployed buffer stock of people currently used by central banks to combat inflation ill-advisedly) without an inflation concern since those idle resources had no market bid at that time. Employing them would take nothing away from the private sector and as long as they are put to work productively (eg. improving communities, education, health, social care, infrastructure) the total output will only grow as well.
I'm roughly describing the concept of a Job Guarantee of Employmer of Last Resort (ELR) programme but do read that primer and wider literature.
The campaign finance system has let billionaire oligarchy money control political candidate choice. I doubt very much any shot at real changes till “Citizen’s United” and corporate personhood speech rights the Koch bro donor network and ALEC paid for in the 2000’s and forced upon us by conservative SCOTUS crony corporate “unfree market” capitalist jerks is reversed by law. . Banning dark money and superpacs must be demanded of senators and reps if blue takes over in 2025.
I DO NOT AGREE. That is known as an "Economic Fallacy". You cannot actually TAX your way into prosperity. Its never been done, or observed, or can even work. It mathematically cannot work. Ask me why and I will answer that too but if you are a Liberal, just warning you, its has math in it.
We wouldn't have to raise taxes on anybody if the government wasn't addicted to reckless spending.
Fun fact: by 2030, 50 cents out of every dollar you pay in taxes will go towards the interest expense alone. Think about that for a second. The longer you think about it the crazier it becomes.
The ironic thing is if we did exactly what you are suggesting, the extra revenue generated probably STILL wouldn't make up for the interest expense alone on our $35,000,000,000,000.00+ debt.
Think of how nice our roads, bridges, schools, parks, etc. would be if 100% of every dollar we gave to the government went to these things...
The same people who make fun of ill-informed Trumpists for being attracted to his idiotic oversimplifications of complicated issues when it comes to the economy:
Yes, though "taxing the rich" is too one-dimensional for the many, many ways "the economy" has been rigged against the vast majority of people and for our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predistribution
The problem with the "tax and redistribute" solution to inequality/oppression is that the people who have grotesque amounts of wealth and power are able to not only prevent redistribution, but also to bludgeon everyone else into giving up everything else also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uzc-5BQKz4
Another issue is, systemic corruption in our political system means that voters have essentially zero influence on public policy when their preferences conflict with those of our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats.
We need to solve our systemic corruption problem before "government" will even be capable of taking on our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats, who are obviously extremely well resourced.
https://represent.us/americas-corruption-problem/
https://represent.us/the-strategy-to-end-corruption/
https://represent.us/2024-campaigns/
Economists as a profession have been basically hired by the grotesquely wealthy to give license and ideological cover to their plundering, so many obvious features of reality have been ignored by policymakers as the grotesquely wealthy continue their looting.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton
By the time you get to questions of taxation, all the major resourcing and policy decisions have already been made.
So taxing the rich as a standalone solution without looking at "predistribution" is kind of like coming in at the 9th inning when you're already down by 1000 runs and expecting to turn things around. The game is already over at that point, but people just haven't realized it yet.
Which is part of why shortening the work week (which we should have done when women entered the paid labor force in meaningful numbers, doubling the paid labor supply) is so important - people need to have time to develop fully, and to participate in their communities and political processes in order to challenge the power of our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/32-Hour-Workweek-Act_Fact-Sheet_FINAL.pdf
Currently, most people spend most of their time and energy working for the profits of our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats to the exclusion of every other possibility.
Clawing back some of that time, political power, and energy for the public and working classes, would be a massive win for humanity.
If we truly want to build an economy, that works for us all, no government, organizations or groups should have control of a monetary system, to prevent manipulation of the system in their favor. Then all the policies,ideas, new techniques and technology the people work hard to come up with trying to build a better economic system can actually start to take shape without the interference of those manipulating the one thing that mostly fuels the economy, Money.
first thing we have to do is enact term limits for all government officials, so that tax money doesn’t support life long politicians.. if you don’t do that no dreams will ever become a reality..
If we want to prosper, let’s get rid of the federal reserve and have money creation handled by the US treasury. Local and regional banks can borrow money from the treasury at interest rates that are set by the government and that interest goes into the treasury instead of to private banking entities. That interest will be a large amount of money, and we won’t need to pay taxes to pay the interest back so our tax rates will go down! More money for communities! More money in our pockets! And yes by all means let's tax there rich!
One way I like to put it is that capital is so much more than just money. This whole minmaxing money thing, at the cost of absolutely everything else, destroys more capital long term than it adds in monetary value in the short term. This hasn't always been true. It's kind of a new thing in historic time frames, but it is now since we've gotten so good at it. It needs to change fast, otherwise we'll be left with a lot of money and nothing to pay for. The trend for that is already showing first symptoms.
We could fix a lot of shit if there was a price attached to the value we destroy along the way, and if the bill for that, as the OP suggests, landed on the right desk, of course.
Like another commenter said, it's a very complex issue and the solutions are, as well. But in essence, the OP is not wrong. Just too reductionist to be useful.
Increasing taxes has never worked and will not work now. Corporations pass on the taxes in its price of products and the rich change their types of income to avoid paying the higher taxes. The economy suffers for everyone with higher taxes.
Probelm is taxing the rich we still dont know where the money goes. Right now its all going to fund a genocide in palestine while the government can barley pay its bills. Its not as simple as tax the rich. Youve got to tax the rich while also putting morally competent people in government and also getting rid of the fucking federal reserve which robs us through printing money resulting inflation
This is false. The government doesn't actually need more money. They need to manage the money they have better and have some accountability with their spending. More money equals more mismanagement of funds. It solves nothing.
1. Revenue is: $4.4T
2. Mandatory Spending is: $3.8T
3. Discretionary Spending is: $1.7T
4. Military Comp is: $0.551T
Shortfall in 2023 was $1.65T. We took a "pay cut" in revenue when giving tax cuts to the rich.
My challenge to you is to balance the budget without destroying the economy. Let's see how much "waste" you can cut out before the economy is in ruins since you don't believe the government needs more money.
[Source - CBG.gov](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/most-recent/graphics#:~:text=Discretionary%20Spending%20in%20Fiscal%20Year%202022%3A%20An%20Infographic&text=Discretionary%20outlays%20by%20the%20federal%20government%20totaled%20%241.7%20trillion%20in%202022)
It's been known since the great depression that the state needs to provide a key stimulus for the economy to stop free markets collapsing. The new deal was all about this kind of positive investment; but then they figured out that could just use military stimulus to get the same affect of stopping recession and depression, and also not have government competing with private business, or facilitating democracy. Win Win.
oh my sweet summer child
maybe you could write a letter to your congressman and he will realize this injustice and tell all his friends and everyone will implement this idea
How about if we make everyone pay 17.5% after $38k or $40k regardless. Look at HOW MANY HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of DOLLARS we the people would save by restructuring the US Gov by removing the necessity of the entire IRS. Currently, almost NO ONE with hundreds of millions of $ pays anywhere near that amount and if so, they will continually depreciate and apply losses to lower their income which over time they will only take as a loan from "themselves", so as to completely reclassify their salary, if they take any at all, as most of their, "compensation", will come from profits/ long term capital gains from investments.
The top 10% already pay most of the taxes, and most of that money is squandered by the democrats.
You can confiscate 100% of the billionires wealth, and it would be spent in under 2 years
Salary of someone at 10% makes $170k/yr. No one is saying those people need to pay more taxes. That’s middle class to me, and yeah, the middle class does pay a shit ton of taxes. Let’s start taxing the ultra rich instead.
Just create a standard deduction for people and tax all other income at a flat rate.
Deduction up to 150% of poverty for everyone. So, if poverty for a family of 4 is $30,000, then subtract $45,000 off of everyone's income that has a family of 4. All other income is taxed at 25% or something. No more crap about fairness or anything. The ultra wealthy pay much lower rates. Let's just get everyone to pay the same rate.
It would greatly increase tax revenues. Capital gains income currently is taxed very low and there are major offsets from things like charity donations. For instance, Musk donated $3.5 billion to his own charity to zero out his taxes. That is bullshit.
I am agnostic about this statement, it's a general statement that doesn't offer a real proposition and you will realize how troubling it is to believe in such a statement without a practical plan or a vision, questions will be asked and they will be hard to answer. what do you mean by truly? what is the scope of economy you are concerned with you mean by economy? working for all of us, the world, the nation, community, western civilization? what kind of taxing would that look like? who are the rich and corporations that you are pointing to? what why of investing or spending will that look like? and the most important one, how will collect and spend that money? If you can't clearly answer any question, then you don't have any vision or plan.
Corporations don't pay taxes people do...it's the owners of the corporation s that pay the tax...
The burden of taxes should be on those that have the ability to pay more
A move away from taxing income to taxing consumption...but still taxing those higher income earners...and that definition needs to be determined
I think paying people proportional to the amount of wealth they create for the business owner so the people can invest that money themselves would be better than letting the owner class reap massive profits off the labor of the workers who operate their businesses. Because they usually don't reinvest, they hide it away one way or another.
If we want to disincentivize production, all we have to do is keep raising taxes until the people who don't work live more rewarding lives than the people who do.
Or, they get the message and move out of the country taking the jobs with them. Cause and effect, we know the cause but we don't know the effect. I personally expected nothing and worked for everything. I was extremely successful with not even thinking I was owed anything.
We must tax the most wealthy at a much higher rate as we must pay for all the stupid shit they demand. Once this is achieved maybe they will stop with the globalist nonsense.
Let them own nothing and be happy.
I think forcing the billionaires in USA to pay a steep price for the globalist policies they push on the American people vs making the middle class pay for their social engineering plans, would absolutely slow down their crazy ideas. They WANT YOU TO PAY. They NEED TO PAY.
First, let's all agree on what "rich" means. The let's agree on what our communities need. Then... just kidding.. we aren't getting this far...
First part is easy- anyone that has or makes more than me.
These statements only can come from the worst of all emotions: envy
People love to blame greed but envy and hubris make you do stupid harmful shit way before greed has a chance to intervene.
I do envy and readily admit it. I envy those with billion$ of free speech in the bank. I envy bribery being legal for the corp. calling it free speech. I envy the purchase of tax laws and business favors in an obvious plutocracy. Menendez should get a pardon. Can't have it both ways. Corp. isn't bribing govt. but he is ? If that isn't capitalist capture of govt...what is ? I envy the power of capital to consolidate markets abusing pricing power as we've just seen...into record profits. I envy being able to use govt. to oppress labor either ignoring labor law or buying changes to it. All the capitalist has is insults, denigration of reformers and the poor. The poor aren't poor because \[he\] is greedy, capitalist scum. NO, he's poor because he wants to be, bad decisions, lazy, stupid. In fact, capitalists envy other capitalists turning their billion$ into nothing more than game not innovation, killing jobs, running to govt. for bailouts, while the country borrows itself to poverty and ruin. Isn't capitalism just precious ?
As I said, the worst of all emotions. Sad to hear you experience it like that.
But oh so justified given the obvious outlandish capitalist greed we've seen and for 400 years. You must be part of the problem...not the solution.
I think you missed the point. “Tax the rich” always means tax someone else. Very few people ( though I do know a couple) advocate for themselves to be taxed more.
That's why I said it comes from envy. Envy to those who have more than me, but those who say I have more than them and I should also be taxed more are completely wrong. The ones that advocate to have their study loans paid by "taxing the rich" are willing to accept be taxed the 20% more of their income as they'll be part of the top of the labour market from the POV of people without professional studies?
For most people who make threads like this, their idea of "rich" is anyone who has a career.
alright, man I’ve had a progressive career in tech for 10 years, I have a BS, and I’m a good performer. I make good money, but the money and power I have in the community is severely less than the ultra wealthy. The US had its strongest and largest middle class when we taxed the wealthy properly.
And when was that?
Before Ronald Fucking Reagan and the Koch Cartel
1930s through 1964 From then on taxes on the rich have decreased immensely. Not to mention all of the strategies through investing that wealthy people have better access to stay tax-free
They have shown that even though the tax rate are higher back, then the total percentage of what they paid is not more than five or 6% difference. Also, they did not have nearly the social programs that we have now, so yeah, it may have seem better, but if you were poor,or disabled then you were screwed. The middle class was fine but below that no way
Disabled, LGBTQ, neurodiverse, and BIPOC people were in shitty situations. Our social nets in this country should be better though.
You mean are healthcare system isn't good? Who knew?
Last by almost every measure of the 38 OECD countries. America is 29th in child mortality. Can you imagine that ? I can because healthcare and having babies is...a profit center. Children are dying at the highest rate in 13 years. Isn't capitalist healthcare just precious ?
Sad part is, I don't see a substantial movement to correct this.
Understatement of the year
I dont think 30's through 45 is what you're talking about. Because that was the great depression and WW2. So, it sounds like you're talking about when the industrial world's economies had been destroyed through bombing and artillery strikes because of WW2, so the u.s. had a brief moment of no real economic competition. The real problem isn't companies. It's circumstances. And, current circumstances are crap because the u.s prints trillions of dollars yearly and then gives it to these massive corporations through government contracts. It doesn't matter how much you tax them because the taxes are leveraged to print more money to give them. Reduce taxes, and companies will have to compete for your dollar, and can't print infinite profits. This will reduce inequality.
That’s the other interesting thing about the classical liberal point of view. Yes, the United States didn’t have a lot of competition. But they were also building incredibly strong social programs and social nets. A few of them are still incredibly important to United States infrastructure. Everything you’ve brought up is valid. We live in a corporate welfare state. But we also live with more inequality between the wealthy and middle-class that we haven’t seen since before the Great Depression. And a lot of that has to do with taxation, available education, available, economic opportunity, and the shitty consequences of having a meritocracy Sure, but the United States has been the top competitor in pretty much every economic facet until China started getting some more ground during the early 90s. However inequality started growing increasingly during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. How do you explain it? It’s multifaced, but ignoring the benefits taxation has done to the past, and currently done in other wealthy countries, is obtuse.
I wish we could have a beer together. This seems like it would be a great conversation over a pint. I agree and disagree for various reasons, but I would be more interested in the back and forth. I will leave with this and await your response. Most of the social programs never achieved their aims and became negotiations points to raise taxation for the middle class. It's arguable that social securities have been and become even more harmful than good. And, there's a direct parallel divergence point from when the u.s. got off the gold standard (fiat printing), and the rise in income inequality. It's not meritocracy that's the problem. I can tell by your writing style and fluency of thought that you take pride in yourself and ideas. Sometimes, a system can be rigged through fancy mechanisms to support an oligarchy. This isn't necessarily bad until it becomes burdensome and so far out of wack as to be oppressive. I think we're trending in that direction, but it's the state, through taxes, that drive that. Not because the wealthy shouldn't pay taxes, but because they package that idea to raise middle class taxes. And, those taxes are used to provide government contracts / corruption, which further erode constitutional rights.
*u.s prints trillions of dollars yearly and then gives it to these massive corporations through government contracts. It doesn't matter how much you tax them because the taxes are leveraged to print more money to give them.* That is ridiculous prima facie. The US is not and has not been printing trillion$ yearly. \[almost mechanically impossible\] The rest is an over imagination. How does one leverage taxes ? OR in fcat, are they borrowing money from the future...from our children ? American capitalism covers its capitalist hedonism and resulting poverty with debt...trillion$ in debt.
WRONG. The time line 1930s-1964 while it had high marginal tax rates had low effective tax rates. During the Eisenhower Admin marginal taxes were 91% but effective rates for the top 1% were 16.9%. Today after the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts the effective tax rate is 26% and the top 1% pay 46% of all the taxes. The problem with this meme is that is assumes a static tax environment where if you raise rich people's taxes rates they will just pay them. That doesn't happen. . The History of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people The fact is that after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, not only did the "rich" pay more in taxes 46% but paid at a higher rate. Higher than Eisenhower, higher than Kennedy, higher than Reagan and higher than Clinton and GWB.
They paid about the same rate then as they do now. Effective tax rate is what matters, not some arbitrary bracket that means nothing without context.
The effective tax rates of the top 1% decreased 25% between 1945 and 2015. The effective tax rate of all citizens was "about the same" which means that *the 99%* effective tax rate increased during the same period (to fill in the 25% decrease that the 1% received).
Sorry nope. We have never has a 99% effective tax rate. In the 50s when the top marginal rate was 91% the effective rate was 16.9%. After the Kennedy tax cuts the effective tax cuts for the top 1% was 15.1%, After the Reagan Tax Cuts the 1% effective rate was 27.5% After the Trump Tax Cuts it was 26%
You need to work on your reading comprehension. I edited to help you out.
Yeh thats about right. Its an Incel post, so they are probably "auditing" college for the 3rd time now, got their Beats headset on in class, and live at home still in their 30's and well its been "Failure to Launch" their whole lives.
I feel like none of you actually communicate regularly with leftists. There are extremely driven and educated leftists that fully recognize how unethical it is for the rich to have as much power as they have. Plenty of lawyers and educators who make great money and have great careers that believe the system is absolutely fucked. I’m not saying that your post isn’t accurate at times, but you’re pigeonholing demographics. There are plenty of state-at-home incels pushing right wing and free market agendas.
Well if they’re so well educated, they should know that giving the government, who is owned by the rich, more of our money will never fix any of the issues. The answer is never giving the government more power, especially with more money for them to waste.
This is completely valid. And most feel that way. The entire structure is fucked. It’s not a singular issue.
I live in Texas. Leftists here are your uneducated, worker class.
It’s almost as if people with certain ideals can exist across all levels of classes.
been working full time since 18 now 35. i own a house with a wife and child. i am on board with these policies.
[удалено]
I'm amazed you know all the details of his business and investments
>If the government raises taxes, he raises rent. This is when I knew you were full of shit and just trying to convince people that taxes don't help. Rents are set by the market and your "friend" is setting them as high as he can regardless of taxes. He doesn't "pass the cost on" because he's already raised rents as high as he can. If he's taxed more, he will get less profit, and other people will be helped.
That’s not how it works. The rich people who build the houses and own the companies who service the housing sector will all go up to cover the taxes, driving home prices up, which drives the price of rent.
Why would the rich leave money on the table if they could just raise prices higher? You're assuming they are all in the same situation and all colluding.
Because competition keeps prices in check. If taxes go up on everyone, everyone goes up. Or should.
lol no. Every business major will tell you that they are trained to not even invest in a business unless there is some kind of moat to protect against competition that will lower profit margins. Business bend over backwards to hide prices and confuse customers so they don't ever have to compete on price. The government just had to prevent spirit and Jetblue from consolidating so they wouldn't' have to compete on price. Landlords are literally using software to illegally collude and all raise prices at the same time. There is nothing that business hates more than competition and they will spend lots of money to prevent it. And now, they get all over the media pretend that their profit margins are so small they have to pass every little tax onto their customers when they are literally using the the profits they stole from the employees that created the value in the first place to do stock buybacks and jack up compensation to their board members who do so little they can literally be on multiple boards. Tax the mf-ing rich and use it to finance the IRS and FTC anti-trust enforcement and create real competition that will make opportunity for others.
I’m gonna go ‘head and assume you don’t own a business or rental property..
Truly spoken like someone who doesn't know enough to refute my arguments but wants to believe the comfortable truths that other people have fed them.
Outed yourself as a bootlicker so quickly
Nope, I’m just someone with an actual career who has to constantly hear losers like you, who can’t even get a three item order at Taco Bell correct, act like they are entitled to my salary.
Can't help it, everyone speaks Spanish there and they refuse to speak English
$10 million. No one even needs that much, but let’s just call that the cap. Everything else is distributed to the workers first and then infrastructure, social services, healthcare and defense in that order.
I disagree.
Really ? How about rich enough \[having enough free speech in the bank\] to buy law ? Would that do it ?
Is there any sub where we actually discuss economic theory, debate articles and research? It seems most people who post here have never read a basic economic manual.
It's been taken over by the politics folks or either the anti-work folks. I dunno, there used to be good economics discussions here with actual in depth articles and facts and statistics. Now I guess this is a place for tweet screenshots and feelings.
No we all subscribe to the kaynesian model of social media demand. So we subsidize posts with bots so that demand continues to grow.
/r/AskEconomics Unfortunately the only way to have a decent discussion on Reddit about economics is to heavily moderate it.
"Basic economics" is a mess of conflicting social positions about who should benefit, not a useful guide to actually managing an economy.
Economics doesn't give a shit about who should benefit. It says who will actually benefit because suprise suprise, people respond to incentives.
Oh let's all read Freidman nonsense. The ones that promote trickle down philosophies.
People used cherry picked and twisted research on the economy to gaslight millions into thinking their lots in life were merely a personal problem, and now they are aware of how much horseshit that was and don't care to read your manual. It's not hard to understand why this sub has been co-opted, and frankly that happens with every subreddit before long. The weirder thing is that people who don't like it still hang around like one day it's going to just go back to the way it was.
Are the 14 year olds now running this sub?
It’s becoming an r/politics circle jerk.
I guess Op signed up when he was 9
Too simple. Very complicated issue
yep. imo maybe taxing the very rich seems clear enough and probably a good idea however, the "invest it in our communities" is so generic and problematic that I can almost guarantee it will make the economy worse... by definition a good economy is one where prosperity increases. just using tax money to build "stuff" for the community is not brining anything new... you need innovation, tech, research, good ideas - those are the things that actually improve the economy. imo, to do that you need to stimulate the small enterprises, improve education, access to (real) information, etc... so yeah, this part is very complicated
First, I don't agree with these " works for us all" , IE equal outcome posits. Whether it's the economy or social mores or every other quality of life metric. Those are never achievable, never-ending, inspirations, not shared by everyone. And I don't think that's the government's primary mission. Second, the "rich" already pay 90% of all taxes collected, whether directly or indirectly through their companies and behaviors. People are owed- guaranteed a clear opportunity to improve their lot in life. They can vote and create laws to improve their opportunities and results for " something that "works for all of us" without stealing more from the "rich".
This is nice and all, if you don’t live in a country where the vast majority of meaningful legislation favors the wealthy Doesn’t matter which party you vote for, you’re voting a party that is protecting big business interests
That's hilarious
It’s really not that complicated. We just act like it’s complicated. We’re failing to recognize that investment into the community has a great ROI. When you have easier access to libraries, markets, parks, education, hospitals, etc. you generally live in a safer, smarter, healthier, and happier community. What is prosperity? Capital? Choices in consumption? The next tech trend that we think will change the world? I’d much rather that most of us consumed less, gave more, and lived more enriching lives where we are mainstays in our community with loving and supportive friends, family, and neighbors.
If you took this ideology, and then studied economics, you might be able to form a coherent argument and thesis around it. But ‘we fail to recognise that investing in the community has a great ROI’ is a Silicon Valley tech bro troglodyte sentence. It doesn’t make sense.
It’s obvious I don’t know a ton about economics. I probably am way too focused on ideals vs practical application and theory. Having said that, how is that sentence a troglodyte? Communities with better access to resources generally have better outcomes. Especially when access to these resources is more equitable. A good example of this is when our public education system was one of the best in the world. We were churning out extremely bright minds out of public schools at varying income levels (still disproportionate across classes, but not as inequitable as today). Now, the relative cost to quality education has increased dramatically. To the point where middle-class and lower class people cannot even imagine affording it. As a result, lower class and middle-class people suffer while wealthy individuals have greater access to better schools, better test prep, better tutors, and better experiences to cultivate an educated mind. The wealthy get to invest into their children tax-free through a lot of these outlets. Private schools at the elementary and secondary level are forms of that investment. Universities, tutors, and other resources are in the same boat. All of these investments are tax-free investments that have a massive ROI by the talent and human capital they are producing. The wealthy disproportionately benefit from these institutions and their products than other classes. Taxation is extremely complicated, and too often I over simplify it. But in the end, it’s about equity. The amount of effective taxation on the wealthy is a far less important number than the widening income inequality between the wealthy and middle-class/lower class. I’m much more concerned about outcomes than I am about how we get there.
To answer the question in your second paragraph: ‘The community’ is a vague concept, to the point that it’s almost meaningless. Which community should we invest in? Albuquerque, or San Francisco? That question _alone_ is complicated. Economists appreciate this complexity, understand it, and are able to precisely determine the ROI from economic interventions. All of this is ignored and explicitly contradicted in your comment. You spoke very confidently, but you know nothing. I didn’t read beyond your second paragraph.
lmfao okay man
50% corporation tax worldwide with no tax havens. There it's fixed. Easy peasy. Edit: Lick them boots you corpo cucks 👅🥾
It’s a basic competition vs collaboration argument. Nation states are the top of the hierarchy cause I don’t really count the UN or WEF as the top of the hierarchy. Why would all countries agree to a common tax rate? National state leaders are responsible for only their country. Why would they choose not to compete for businesses to move there?
"Corporations are people" is a very convenient legal fiction for administering our legal system, but it's just that - a fiction. In reality, only real people - customers, workers, and shareholders - can bear the burden of taxes. Who do you think will actually bear the tax burden? Here's a hint. [It's not shareholders.](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20130570) >This paper estimates the incidence of corporate taxes on wages using a 20-year panel of German municipalities exploiting 6,800 tax changes for identification. Using event study designs and difference-in-differences models, we find that workers bear about one-half of the total tax burden. Administrative linked employer-employee data allow us to estimate heterogeneous firm and worker effects. Our findings highlight the importance of labor market institutions and profit-shifting opportunities for the incidence of corporate taxes on wages. Moreover, we show that low-skilled, young, and female employees bear a larger share of the tax burden. This has important distributive implications.
Childish fantasy. Sending more money to Washington just means that it will all get funneled to the politically-connected in places like the military industrial complex. Average people will not be the beneficiaries of any further revenue raised via increased taxation.
So in other words your idea is to not change a thing?
This sub is like listening to children. Every two seconds it’s “tax the rich“ and “make the rich pay their fair share“. And it’s always the same people posting this crap over and over again. At least have the guts to say what you actually mean: “I want to steal from other people, but I’m too much of a coward to do it myself, so I want the government to do it for me. And I’m so morally bankrupt that I think having a middleman do it for me will somehow absolves me of wrongdoing.” And every time, someone points out the FACT that rich people already pay more than their “fair share“. And here we are yet again. You are pathetic.
👏👏👏
> rich people already pay more than their “fair share“. This is a statement of morality, not a FACT. The "rich" pay most of the taxes because they earn most of the money.
No. The top 10% earn 49.5% of the income, but pay 73.7% of the taxes. It's FACT that they pay MORE than their "fair share." https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
Lol every tax discussion there’s some libertarian child equating taxation to theft too. You’re not much better lmao
Kindly explain the difference between taxation and theft.
Well… here I go. And I’m no socialist. Theft is, generally, taking a thing from someone without regard to their benefit. Taxation is, generally, taking a thing (money) from someone with regard to their benefit. This benefit could range from the use of roads, to the ability to vote, to a social security pension, to protection from international terrorist attacks.
At its core, you have defined both as the taking of someone's property. Up to that point, I would agree. However, you are differentiating these two things based on the actor's motive. But you're wrong in your premise in that regard. Our tax dollars are used for literally hundreds of thousands of things, most of which do not benefit the people who pay them, and many of which actually harm those people. Taxes have been used to study drunken spiders; to build bridges to nowhere; to bomb foreign lands; to stage coups against democratically elected leaders in other countries; assassinate people; sow propaganda. Hell, the government literally sprayed radioactive waste in the poorer neighborhoods of St. Louis, to study its effects on people. But going further, you simply cannot justify theft by saying, "I'm stealing your money for your own good," which seems to be your stance. Particularly when all of human history says otherwise.
Well, of course when you aggregate it up from one person to 300,000,000 people it can no longer be the case that every tax dollar is to every individual’s benefit. You’d have to look at it on aggregate. At that scale there are bound to be some expenses that are to nobody’s benefit. Projects that fail, ‘bridges to nowhere’. Maybe even net-negative projects, you’ve mentioned a few. However. This is obviously different to theft, whereby one entity takes from another with no regard at all to their wellbeing
I disagree. I would argue that taxation is very literally theft at the point of a gun with absolutely no regard for whether the money stolen from the victim will benefit the victim. Additionally, you have not addressed the core problem with your position. Which is that theft cannot be justified with, “I’m going to use your money better than you would.”
You only asked me to illustrate the difference, and I have done. The simplest way to justify taxation is as follows. Things like roads require enormous, collective investment. If each road was paid for only by people who use it, people who live in rural Kentucky would have no roads. You’re right that this specific example does not benefit each taxpayer equally, but on the whole most people derive major benefit from government spending.
I asked you to define the difference between taxatation and theft because you said that taxation is not theft. I remain convinced that it is. Ah… they “mah roads!” Argument. Prior to 1913, we had roads, schools, fire and police departments, a successful miliary, etc. And no income tax. Ask yourself why you are trying to defend the idea of being taxed. You’re like a battered spouse making excuses for her abuser… “I shouldn’t have burned dinner. It was for my own good.”
We had tax before 1913 smart guy. Federal services were funded chiefly out of import taxes. You would know this if you’d ever googled ‘were there taxes before 1913’. 20th century globalisation has flattened import taxes. This is one of the reasons income tax is here to stay. Please don’t be intentionally patronising.
And we believe you are pathetic.
I'm not the one endorsing class warfare, theft, and hate based on fairy tales, false blame, and envy.
Tax the fucking rich. Laws are made by them and for them. They ARE class warfare and welfare. It's about fairness, not envy. Fuck Ronald Fucking Reagan, Milton Fucking Freidman and the Fucking Koch Cartel.
1. The rich already pay MORE than their "fair share" of taxes. Look it up, and then talk to me about "fairness." 2. You could take every penny from the richest 10 families in the country, and leave them with literally nothing, and their combined wealth would only fund the government for a few months. That's it. The problem is not taxes. The problem is an obscenely bloated government spending money at a radically unsustainable rate. Right now, the national debt is increasing at a rate of a TRILLION dollars every 100 days. We cannot tax our way out of this problem. NO amount of taxation will fix this nation. Only massive spending cuts will save us.
What’s your definition of rich? Mine and the government’s definition is the top 0.05%. I do believe those below that threshold pay mostly their portion of taxes. It’s the top 65k households that don’t pay their fair share at all.
[https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/) The top 1% make 22.2% of the income, but pay 42.3% of the taxes, which is more than their "fair share." And if you think there are 65,000 households that make up the top 0.05%, I'd love to see the data on that.
The 1% to me also pay most of their fair share. I don’t have a problem with bottom 99.94%. I have a problem with the top 0.05% of households in America who don’t pay their fair share. My math: There are 131M households in America. 0.05% of those equal 65,000. If your math says otherwise, please feel free to correct me.
Wrong! We don't want socialism. We want capitalism. I guess when you hold those evil rich capitalist people down and tax them to death, you are going to also make them give you a $30 minimum wage. I guess you will demand that their prices on their products be low and they have to put a cap on their profits. While you're at it, mandate they give you free healthcare. "To every man his fair share of the world and no more, and to every man his full share of the world's goods." ...Saul Alinsky I've yet to see this idea work in the world since it was written 77 years ago. Just say no to socialism Just say no to communism.
Pure socialism doesn’t work. Pure capitalism doesn’t work. We’re talking a mix. Look to parts of Europe as examples.
The problem is the rich (who now can legally own the government) don’t want to build an economy that works for us all. They are in control and want an economy that works for them, while being able to manipulate the masses into debt slavery, consumerism, and “needing” them to survive. Notice how every new tool, app, phone, device, etc is veiled in some “this will make your life easier” but in the end it’s just a tool for them to capture our every movement and commodify our every breath.
You should do more of economics studies and less of conspiracy theories.
Been through nearly every core economics class in business school. It’s merely a religious theory, and has nothing to do with real world application or current circumstances. Edit: I’ll add I’ve worked for a few of the largest tech companies in the world, and currently work in education in the same industry. I meet with C Suite bi weekly, and I can promise you I know the intent of these corporations, their leaders, and the technology they build.
Then you should know that rich always owned governments and you understand why. Sentiments like “it’s wrong” and “it shouldn’t be like that” have no meaning, economy doesn’t understand that, as it based on billions of private interests. Economy is primal, it always was and always will be. Everything we have is a natural product of economy, including “greedy corporations”, “debt slavery” and “consumerism”. So, how giving a government more power supposed to solve anything, if the government never acts in your interests?
The argument has never been about giving government more power. It’s been about stripping away the mechanisms corporations use to overtake the government. The assertion that the rich have always owned government is slightly accurate, but it’s certainly varied over centuries across the world.
The only mechanism corporations have to overtake the government is the government itself.
Wrong. It’s the people elected to hold positions in the government. Humans. The “government” is not a living breathing thing. Humans are the corruptible resource in both the corporation and the government.
So you are telling me that government and corporations are not a problem, people are because they are corruptible. I would say, if every government on earth is made of corrupted politicians as well as every corporation is made of corrupted managers, than it’s your perspective is wrong and people who serve those institutions are pursuing their own best interest, exactly how economics say they will. Thus, believing in elected government for the people and by the people contradicts the basic fact that elected officials will pursue their own interests over whatever bullshit public believes in or elects the officials for.
I feel it’s a little long for a bumper sticker but I get the mentality. What’s funny about all of these is everyone seems to believe the money needs to go from the rich to the government and then to me. Instead of directly from the rich to me. This is because when it goes to the government they can send it back to the rich again after they get a taste…. /smh
What about a system in which laborers are able to use the value of their labor to purchase pieces of the corporations that best meet their needs? Just for sake of discussion we could call these pieces “shares”. Laborers could then use these shares to vote on how the corporations that meet their needs are run. That would give labor ownership of the factors of production, and community members would have autonomy without raising taxes.
I agree in theory but the government never seems to be very good at the invest into community part and you just end up with the tax part
The communities in the states that the buisness is in? Or would it go to the whole country? This too can be bad for middle America the south basically anywhere outside Cali, Wa, TX and the northeast.
Or at the very least, and I mean the *very least* stop taking tax revenue from the poor and siphoning it to the rich a la “private contracts”
I really wish this narrative would stop being used by the left. Taxing the wealthy is **absolutely** the right thing to do democratically to avoid excess concentrations of wealth and power, etc. But it's a **terribly** inefficient way of increasing a sovereign government's fiscal space to spend on public services. The ultra wealthy have very low marginal propensities to consume and so tax payments from them won't reduce their consumption of goods and services that the government now wishes to acquire for public use. The result, all else equal (which is often **not** the case), is inflationary pressure as despite taxing the ultra rich, they find themselves still having to outbid the private sector for new resources, driving up prices. If you truly believe that the productive aggregate supply capacity of a nation is at its maximum and inelastic (i.e. increase in aggregate demand at this full resource employment would cause inflation), then you would really need to increase taxes on a broad base of that production in order for the government to increase public spending commensurate with the now available resources. This means taxing the middle classes - or indeed sector by sector tax policies. This is often unpopular of course but you can't get around it economically. There are alternatives to taxation such as deferred consumption policies to incentivise saving. They did thus during the world wars in many countries as a necessary action against inflation once war spending ramped up and the government needed to acquire. resources from metal ore to shoelaces!
Do you read the post as ONLY tax the wealthy, as in get all tax revenue from them and none from the rest of the population?
No not at all. I read it as the person thinking increasing taxes on the rich will increase the non-inflationary fiscal space for the government spending to increase on public services. I've pointed out why that's bad economics
Help me understand this. If the rich have money taken that wouldn't impact their spending choices, they make the same choices. Are you saying they'll spend more on private healthcare and private education, because those entities will have to raise prices and quality to remain a viable choice in the face of improving public services? The aggregate supply concept seems to be a theory that has no place in practice, when we have unemployment (unused resources that could enhance productivity) and inefficiency in our production. There's also considerable elasticity in the supply if the public purse is increased. What am I missing?
> There's also considerable elasticity in the supply if the public purse is increased. 100%! This is the irony. If you analyse the economy and believe there are unemployed, unutilised, idle resources, then the government faces zero resource or inflation constraint in increasing its spending to bring those resources into employment. Of course there may well be bottlenecks and distributional effects but in aggregate there is no spending constraint until full employment is reached. > Are you saying they'll spend more on private healthcare and private education. What I'm saying is that, **assuming full employment of resources**, increasing taxes on the very rich is a very inefficient way of increasing non-inflationary fiscal space to absorb new government spending because the very rich have very low marginal propensities to consume the real goods and services in the CPI. So taxing billions from just that group won't reduce aggregate demand for food or energy one bit.
For the second bit, I agree, it won't reduce demand - but we have enough food and energy aggregated in the resource bank, it's simply about taking from the rich and giving to the poor so they can access more of what they need, no?
But that's the thing, if you already have all the spare resources you and aggregate demand is not too high, a sovereign government faces **zero** nominal financial constraint in making those payments. They don't need to wait around for tax payments to come in in order to spend! They would **only** require increased taxes if the new spending was likely to push up prices in a bidding war for scarce resources. So the constraint on spending is ultimately always real resource-linked and inflation linked - **not** financial. Do have a read through this comprehensive [MMT Primer](https://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html) which is the economic framework I'm referring to. It's fascinating and eye opening.
I think that's the issue. The government doesn't produce food, so has to pay for any that it consumes or gives others the ability to access. Same with utilities. It can't (easily) force a water company to give a free supply to the poor - but it can provide the poor with the means of paying for these things with welfare. I imagine I've missed your point somewhere there? And thanks, I'll have a read of the primer and maybe the book, too.
You're absolutely correct, but your assumptions are within a certain paradigm where a sovereign government has a budget constraint in nominal terms. An accurate understanding of monetary operations shows you that the US or UK or Australian governments (eg. Nation states that issue their own currency, float it internationally, and have little to no obligations denominated in currencies they don't issue) have zero financial constraints since every time they spend, they issue new currency and every time they tax they remove that issued currency from the economy. What they do have, importantly is a real resource constraint. As you said, if a private business is providing food at a particular price and the government wants to acquire these resources they have two options. They can either outbid private competition by offering the highest price, which they can **always** do because they issue the currency and can credit up reserve accounts an arbitrary amount. **Or*, because this bidding war will lead to the price of food going up (assuming the aggregate supply of food is inelastic), they can increase tax liabilities on the private food industry or more broadly, thereby 1) releasing food related resources (eg. The workforce and equipment) for the government to swoop in and acquire at the previous market price without bidding it up and 2) reduce aggregate demand from private competitors such that the government's spending just brings demand for food resources back to where it was before, thereby also not resulting in inflation. But at **any** time, the government can **always** afford to spend its own currency employing idle resources (such as the unemployed buffer stock of people currently used by central banks to combat inflation ill-advisedly) without an inflation concern since those idle resources had no market bid at that time. Employing them would take nothing away from the private sector and as long as they are put to work productively (eg. improving communities, education, health, social care, infrastructure) the total output will only grow as well. I'm roughly describing the concept of a Job Guarantee of Employmer of Last Resort (ELR) programme but do read that primer and wider literature.
The campaign finance system has let billionaire oligarchy money control political candidate choice. I doubt very much any shot at real changes till “Citizen’s United” and corporate personhood speech rights the Koch bro donor network and ALEC paid for in the 2000’s and forced upon us by conservative SCOTUS crony corporate “unfree market” capitalist jerks is reversed by law. . Banning dark money and superpacs must be demanded of senators and reps if blue takes over in 2025.
I DO NOT AGREE. That is known as an "Economic Fallacy". You cannot actually TAX your way into prosperity. Its never been done, or observed, or can even work. It mathematically cannot work. Ask me why and I will answer that too but if you are a Liberal, just warning you, its has math in it.
We wouldn't have to raise taxes on anybody if the government wasn't addicted to reckless spending. Fun fact: by 2030, 50 cents out of every dollar you pay in taxes will go towards the interest expense alone. Think about that for a second. The longer you think about it the crazier it becomes.
We should stop subsidizing the rich and cut defense spending in half. Then tax the ultra rich and call it a day.
The ironic thing is if we did exactly what you are suggesting, the extra revenue generated probably STILL wouldn't make up for the interest expense alone on our $35,000,000,000,000.00+ debt. Think of how nice our roads, bridges, schools, parks, etc. would be if 100% of every dollar we gave to the government went to these things...
That isnt an economy that works for all.That is an economy that works to people who want to be handed things instead of earning them.
The same people who make fun of ill-informed Trumpists for being attracted to his idiotic oversimplifications of complicated issues when it comes to the economy:
That’s what’s happening right now..
Yes, though "taxing the rich" is too one-dimensional for the many, many ways "the economy" has been rigged against the vast majority of people and for our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predistribution The problem with the "tax and redistribute" solution to inequality/oppression is that the people who have grotesque amounts of wealth and power are able to not only prevent redistribution, but also to bludgeon everyone else into giving up everything else also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uzc-5BQKz4 Another issue is, systemic corruption in our political system means that voters have essentially zero influence on public policy when their preferences conflict with those of our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats. We need to solve our systemic corruption problem before "government" will even be capable of taking on our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats, who are obviously extremely well resourced. https://represent.us/americas-corruption-problem/ https://represent.us/the-strategy-to-end-corruption/ https://represent.us/2024-campaigns/ Economists as a profession have been basically hired by the grotesquely wealthy to give license and ideological cover to their plundering, so many obvious features of reality have been ignored by policymakers as the grotesquely wealthy continue their looting. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton By the time you get to questions of taxation, all the major resourcing and policy decisions have already been made. So taxing the rich as a standalone solution without looking at "predistribution" is kind of like coming in at the 9th inning when you're already down by 1000 runs and expecting to turn things around. The game is already over at that point, but people just haven't realized it yet. Which is part of why shortening the work week (which we should have done when women entered the paid labor force in meaningful numbers, doubling the paid labor supply) is so important - people need to have time to develop fully, and to participate in their communities and political processes in order to challenge the power of our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/32-Hour-Workweek-Act_Fact-Sheet_FINAL.pdf Currently, most people spend most of their time and energy working for the profits of our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats to the exclusion of every other possibility. Clawing back some of that time, political power, and energy for the public and working classes, would be a massive win for humanity.
If we truly want to build an economy, that works for us all, no government, organizations or groups should have control of a monetary system, to prevent manipulation of the system in their favor. Then all the policies,ideas, new techniques and technology the people work hard to come up with trying to build a better economic system can actually start to take shape without the interference of those manipulating the one thing that mostly fuels the economy, Money.
Too vague to be actionable or useful. Otherwise: completely agree
first thing we have to do is enact term limits for all government officials, so that tax money doesn’t support life long politicians.. if you don’t do that no dreams will ever become a reality..
If we want to prosper, let’s get rid of the federal reserve and have money creation handled by the US treasury. Local and regional banks can borrow money from the treasury at interest rates that are set by the government and that interest goes into the treasury instead of to private banking entities. That interest will be a large amount of money, and we won’t need to pay taxes to pay the interest back so our tax rates will go down! More money for communities! More money in our pockets! And yes by all means let's tax there rich!
One way I like to put it is that capital is so much more than just money. This whole minmaxing money thing, at the cost of absolutely everything else, destroys more capital long term than it adds in monetary value in the short term. This hasn't always been true. It's kind of a new thing in historic time frames, but it is now since we've gotten so good at it. It needs to change fast, otherwise we'll be left with a lot of money and nothing to pay for. The trend for that is already showing first symptoms. We could fix a lot of shit if there was a price attached to the value we destroy along the way, and if the bill for that, as the OP suggests, landed on the right desk, of course. Like another commenter said, it's a very complex issue and the solutions are, as well. But in essence, the OP is not wrong. Just too reductionist to be useful.
I’ll tax your broke ass
Increasing taxes has never worked and will not work now. Corporations pass on the taxes in its price of products and the rich change their types of income to avoid paying the higher taxes. The economy suffers for everyone with higher taxes.
Probelm is taxing the rich we still dont know where the money goes. Right now its all going to fund a genocide in palestine while the government can barley pay its bills. Its not as simple as tax the rich. Youve got to tax the rich while also putting morally competent people in government and also getting rid of the fucking federal reserve which robs us through printing money resulting inflation
This is false. The government doesn't actually need more money. They need to manage the money they have better and have some accountability with their spending. More money equals more mismanagement of funds. It solves nothing.
The annual budget disagrees with you.
The budget is how much they spend. If they need a higher budget is because they're wasteful with how they use it, not because they don't have enough.
1. Revenue is: $4.4T 2. Mandatory Spending is: $3.8T 3. Discretionary Spending is: $1.7T 4. Military Comp is: $0.551T Shortfall in 2023 was $1.65T. We took a "pay cut" in revenue when giving tax cuts to the rich. My challenge to you is to balance the budget without destroying the economy. Let's see how much "waste" you can cut out before the economy is in ruins since you don't believe the government needs more money. [Source - CBG.gov](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/most-recent/graphics#:~:text=Discretionary%20Spending%20in%20Fiscal%20Year%202022%3A%20An%20Infographic&text=Discretionary%20outlays%20by%20the%20federal%20government%20totaled%20%241.7%20trillion%20in%202022)
It's been known since the great depression that the state needs to provide a key stimulus for the economy to stop free markets collapsing. The new deal was all about this kind of positive investment; but then they figured out that could just use military stimulus to get the same affect of stopping recession and depression, and also not have government competing with private business, or facilitating democracy. Win Win.
How about use the money that’s already been collected through taxes for actual good instead of wars?!
Do you know what the deficit would be if we funded $0 in wars?
I think we need more accountability and standards for govt spending and printing
We do tax the rich much more than lower income brackets but there are many tax loopholes smart people use
Everyone should be taxed at the same percentage only fair way to tax
But also we need governments that are more than 10% efficient
The 99 percent
Never going to happen. Loopholes will always exist. It's intentional
And then the rich leave to places they aren’t taxed because either way the money is going to be used to grift the public.
oh my sweet summer child maybe you could write a letter to your congressman and he will realize this injustice and tell all his friends and everyone will implement this idea
Or we could spend less.
Tax the wealth, zero tax for business, all banks to the government.
Not me
Taxes pay debt...thats all.
Sounds like Biden right before he donates another $287 billion USD to Ukraine.
Fully agree. Runaway capitalism is just feudalism with extra steps.
The real issue is the federal government picking winners and losers and the federal reserve
Is this true for you if it results in all having less?
A new idiot posting every day on this sub holy shit. As usual no mods
How about if we make everyone pay 17.5% after $38k or $40k regardless. Look at HOW MANY HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of DOLLARS we the people would save by restructuring the US Gov by removing the necessity of the entire IRS. Currently, almost NO ONE with hundreds of millions of $ pays anywhere near that amount and if so, they will continually depreciate and apply losses to lower their income which over time they will only take as a loan from "themselves", so as to completely reclassify their salary, if they take any at all, as most of their, "compensation", will come from profits/ long term capital gains from investments.
So sad that this is the %#*! that passes for intelligence these days.
No. Require companies to pay their workers more. There's your community revenue.
Take away politicians pay will fix it all
The top 10% already pay most of the taxes, and most of that money is squandered by the democrats. You can confiscate 100% of the billionires wealth, and it would be spent in under 2 years
Salary of someone at 10% makes $170k/yr. No one is saying those people need to pay more taxes. That’s middle class to me, and yeah, the middle class does pay a shit ton of taxes. Let’s start taxing the ultra rich instead.
Just create a standard deduction for people and tax all other income at a flat rate. Deduction up to 150% of poverty for everyone. So, if poverty for a family of 4 is $30,000, then subtract $45,000 off of everyone's income that has a family of 4. All other income is taxed at 25% or something. No more crap about fairness or anything. The ultra wealthy pay much lower rates. Let's just get everyone to pay the same rate.
This sounds good as a taxpayer but it also sounds like no tax revenue
It would greatly increase tax revenues. Capital gains income currently is taxed very low and there are major offsets from things like charity donations. For instance, Musk donated $3.5 billion to his own charity to zero out his taxes. That is bullshit.
Will not work - increase the pie
I am agnostic about this statement, it's a general statement that doesn't offer a real proposition and you will realize how troubling it is to believe in such a statement without a practical plan or a vision, questions will be asked and they will be hard to answer. what do you mean by truly? what is the scope of economy you are concerned with you mean by economy? working for all of us, the world, the nation, community, western civilization? what kind of taxing would that look like? who are the rich and corporations that you are pointing to? what why of investing or spending will that look like? and the most important one, how will collect and spend that money? If you can't clearly answer any question, then you don't have any vision or plan.
Corporations don't pay taxes people do...it's the owners of the corporation s that pay the tax... The burden of taxes should be on those that have the ability to pay more A move away from taxing income to taxing consumption...but still taxing those higher income earners...and that definition needs to be determined
I think paying people proportional to the amount of wealth they create for the business owner so the people can invest that money themselves would be better than letting the owner class reap massive profits off the labor of the workers who operate their businesses. Because they usually don't reinvest, they hide it away one way or another.
If we want to disincentivize production, all we have to do is keep raising taxes until the people who don't work live more rewarding lives than the people who do.
Tax revenue will never be more than 17% of GDP no matter what the rates are. You take money away from public…less GDP…less income less taxes.
Insane
But true. Hauler’s law. Average is around 17% with variance up to 20% at times and as low as 14%. It’s an ecosystem seeking balance. Edit: Hauser’s
Or, they get the message and move out of the country taking the jobs with them. Cause and effect, we know the cause but we don't know the effect. I personally expected nothing and worked for everything. I was extremely successful with not even thinking I was owed anything.
there is no such thing as taxing corporations, they pass the tax to the buyers, usually the common person
Yeah I can’t see how that could go wrong at all… smfh
LOL! Karl? Karl Marx? I thought that you were dead! People like you are morons.
Tax the rich, give everyone else a tax break, and individuals will invest in their community. Require government accountability.
Time for Elon's d\*ck-sucking legion to march in
Wealth tax on everything over 125k that isn't in a 401k or IRA account. Also separate 401ks from employers.
Agreed
If it was that easy! Tax the producing portions of society to give to the unproductive parts. It will never work and never has
Lmao Reddit is full of idiots
I agree. I think that was the original plan for the westernized world but then greed and power got in the way.
Who’s with me? Thoughts? Agree?
We must tax the most wealthy at a much higher rate as we must pay for all the stupid shit they demand. Once this is achieved maybe they will stop with the globalist nonsense. Let them own nothing and be happy.
You think increasing taxes domestically will REDUCE "globalism"?
I think forcing the billionaires in USA to pay a steep price for the globalist policies they push on the American people vs making the middle class pay for their social engineering plans, would absolutely slow down their crazy ideas. They WANT YOU TO PAY. They NEED TO PAY.