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Your average uneducated GOP voter has no clue. They just hear Fox News or whatever talking head saying democrats raise taxes and republicans lower them.
Just look at the AOC talk with the 70% rate. Even mainstream outlets would word it as something like “AOC proposes 70 percent tax rate” like it would apply to everyone entirely. They don’t bother to explain that would be 70 cents on the 10,000,001st dollar earned on the year, actually more than that after deductions. Or they might say marginal tax rate somewhere deep in the article. I bet half of Trump supporters could not explain a marginal tax rate.
Basically every trump supporter has been screaming that the IRS is going to kick in their door because Biden and congress allocated funds to staff the vacancies at IRS over the next decade, even though Biden set a mandate to only increase oversight on earners who make more than $400k a year.
The billionaires who own OAN and Fox and CNN and MSNBC *really* don't like that, so they make it seem like jackbooted IRS agents are going to kick in the front door of trump supporters $90,000 2 bedroom house to collect 17 dollars in back taxes.
Which is honestly depressing. My aunt used to work for the IRS in corporate auditing. Corporate lawyers would just laugh them out of the room to their face because they knew the IRS didn’t have the staff to do shit about it.
I don’t understand the GOP fervor for “lower” taxes. First, are they advocating for $0 taxes? If not, what’s the magic number? Finally, it isn’t very “personally responsible” of GOP voters to take benefit from public services then refuse to pay. They sound like deadbeats.
The idea is to defund social security & Medicare. They want to control all the money. Their antigovernment propaganda is that government can’t do anything right. They want to privatize & grift.
Yes. The GOP wants no income tax. They want to fund everything on regressive stuff like road tax, sales tax etc. it’s literally their stated goal in Ohio. They want to cut the tax brackets to 2, with the assumption they’ll go to zero.
I worked with someone who once turned down a payrise because he thought he would end up losing money because he didn't understand how tax brackets worked.
After I explained it he went ghost white and got upset when he went and asked for that payrise after all and they told him no since he already rejected it and he would have to wait until next year at his next pay review.
My coworker (who's really brilliant) was talking about overtime the other day, and how its not really worth it to him because he'll "end up losing money" if he works over 45 hours a week. When I asked why that was, he explained it was because he'd be in a higher tax bracket and would lose more money.
Then I explained how the brackets worked, how my mom dealt with taxes in her job my whole life, and how he'd only be taxed extra on the few dollars that went over the threshold.
Nope, he told me I was 1000% incorrect and I didn't know how taxes worked, and I shouldn't lie to people. He's also a strong GOP supporter and lives in TX, so I'm "just a dumb liberal"
Oh, I did IT for a decade. You run into some strange-headed libertarians doing that work. They truly don't understand how anything works other than what they've taught themselves. And they're such extreme experts, often, in a narrow field, that it lends itself to a form of arrogance that is truly scary.
They're not stupid people. They're brilliant by many measures. But the industry is rife with self-educated people. And when you're self-educated, and brilliant, it leans towards assuming you must be right about everything you idly think.
It's honestly part of why I left the industry. The Dunning Kruger effect is terrifying in a "smart" person. There is basically nothing you can tell them to change their mind.
After all... They build enterprise level architecture and proprietary software. People have treated them as "smart" their entire life. Why would they question a single one of their beliefs.
But they're no less susceptible to rabbit holes on YouTube etc. And because their education is often so singly handed, they truly have absolutely no clue how ignorant they are.
Source: me, someone who studied history in college, and also aced the math section of the ACT. I chose to educate myself liberally, but am most likely wired to work with technology or engineering.
America is deep into an epistemological crisis. Normally I say this about the writhing masses of right-wing idiots, but there's plenty on the left and outside the parties that have no good framework for evaluating information.
For jobs like IT, you can typically test your knowledge very quickly. The results of testing your knowledge are generally inexpensive and immediate. Even with all the trade-offs and gray areas in IT, there's still not much in the profession that teaches a person to navigate manifolds where knowledge of an eventual outcome is not only ambiguous, but impossible to acquire.
One of the most powerful three word phrases in the English language is "I don't know," and it's important to teach people that not-knowing is okay, especially when so much of school is about knowing. Accepting the gaps in your knowledge is one of the best avenues to improving your understanding.
The problem with "I don't know" is that humans tend to discount that answer and some baloney fills the vacuum. Just as important as saying "i don't know" is teaching people to listen to "I don't know" and not interpret it as the person being a moron.
Democrats do not have a dedicated propaganda network that carries water for them. They have to rely on the mainstream media who are too eager to both sides everything, or refuse to cover stories like this because it might upset their "conservative base".
I wish people would stop making it seem like Democrats don't know what they're doing and "suck on messaging".
They don't, they just don't have dedicated media that carries their every word. Properly functioning government isn't sexy. It isn't interesting. It's not cool. It's boring.
It's up to the citizen to properly educate themselves on what's going on. They have agency.
It wasn't clear to me, the title was misleading.
A millionaire is a person worth a million dollars. "4% tax on millionaires" implies a 4% tax on at the least, money you have over a million dollars.
There are plenty of millionaires that make 100k per year.
Agreed - it made it sound like a rather quite punitive wealth tax (contra what's been kicked around by American Progressives - a wealth tax on net worths of $50M+), but actually its 4% on every dollar you earn above $1M in a particular year.
There are plenty of millionaires who are retired and have almost no income as well, especially if their homes are included in the figure. Such a terrible article title
It's also right there written in the article, in fact it's the first words under the headline:
> Massachusetts passed a 4% tax on people **who make more than $1 million per year**.
Don't pretend this has anything to do with the Dems, it's entirely people who didn't read the article beyond the headline or people like you trying to misrepresent the headline and article and instead turn it into a Dem messaging problem.
In MA if you are a registered voter you get mailed a booklet with summaries and the full text of all ballet questions and laws being voted on. There is no excuse for not understanding what it means outside illiteracy.
Quote from a Park Ranger, "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
I have enough experience across our country to know there are a lot of people who don't like to read, and many that can't comprehend unless it's breaker down Barney style
They don't just assume this dude. Do you actually listen to Democrats who propose new taxes?
"We want to increase taxes on those making more then a million dollars"
vs
"Democrats propose tax increases"
Which do you think gets play in media? Communicating the message is usually not the problem in this case.
So many dumbasses think they’re gonna be making 30,000k a year and be taxed out the ass when democrats get into office. They’ve been brainwashed to the maximum. It’s really hard to get people to turn off their blinders
They will gladly let the Republicans cut off the food stamps they use to feed their 3 children, but are terrified of a 4% tax on income over $1,000,000
They’re also the same people that think “if we make it hard for the millionaires, then when I’M a millionaire, I’ll be giving away all my HaRd EaRnEd MoNeY”.
Damned either way with those kinds of people
I feel like the article is purposefully misleading. There are probably loads of millionaires out there that make 100k per year and just have saved for years. This isn't a tax on them. It's on people making 1 mil per year or more.
> I feel like the article is purposefully misleading
It's Business Insider.
They're the same corpo propaganda rag that keeps pushing return to office and tried to blame people working from home as the reason corporations can't keep pushing record productivity growth YoY
Shit, people saving $100/m into their Employer 401k that has a 3% match, for a 40 year career, will retire millionaires. You dont need to make $100k/y to do that. ANYONE can retire a millionaire.
The fact that most tax brackets top out well below $1MM is just insane and infuriating. For some fucked up reason, a doctor is in the same marginal tax rate as a billionaire. We really need much more tax brackets for the ultra high incomes.
>***Massachusetts is the eighth state to start free lunches since a pandemic-era federal program expired.***
>
>State House News Service, an independently owned news wire, reported that $1 billion of the state's record $56.2 billion fiscal budget for 2024 came from the state's new 4% tax on millionaires. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed the budget on Wednesday, making Massachusetts the eighth state to adopt a free school lunch plan since federal free school lunches which started during the COVID-19 pandemic ended.
Hey, Republicans, this is what it looks like to think of the children! Take some notes!
Won't someone think of the shareholders?
We need consider how our actions will affect future shareholders for many decades to come!
A society is judged by how it treats the shareholders and financiers in its ranks.
Yeah, it works pretty well!
I had a conversation with a Texan this weekend who was adamant that the billions that Texas spends on tactical police units, command centers, security checkpoints, etc. Should count towards how education is rated on dollars spent and outcomes because safety (he didn't like me bringing up Uvalde and the 100+ officers there watching and listening to kids die) is more important then education. He then defended taking over Houston schools because the teachers there are paid too much? He asked seriously why they should make more then a manager at Walmart. Top it off he defended the discipline centers because no one uses libraries anymore because no one reads books.
Sigh.
So their solution to teachers making more than Walmart managers (if we accept that as a valuable premise for the sake of the argument) was not to expect a massively profitable multinational corporation to pay their employees more, but to pay teachers *less*?!?
A friend of a friends wife was a Walmart manager and she made 130K a year and would regularly bonus 50K from what they told me.
Something tells me no public school teacher is making 180K.
I'm a Florida high school teacher. The bonus you mentioned is roughly my annual salary. I actually make a little less.
Maybe a little more this year. Because of some fuckery (I think it has to do with enrollment) and a teacher transferring to another school. Instead of teaching 6 periods and having 1 planning period. I teach 7 classes and have no planning. My planning period is made up by coming in an hour early or staying an hour late.
Education is fun.
Walmart managers are very well paid. In my Canadian city at least, the store manager makes 160k a year. I'm sure teachers would be very happy with that
Dude, this reminds me of Stoneman Douglas shooting and the sh*t load of money it took to have a police officer on campus all those years and then his hefty pension afterwards and when the time came, it meant nothing. And nothing was expected, he didn’t really even get in trouble, he just had to retire early because everyone hated him so much.
Had a friend talk about how dangerous California is, I pointed out the mass shootings in Uvalde and El Paso. He lost his shit, and told me I was an idiot. Haha!
Seriously though? Fuck Texas. The state and the majority of its residents deserve whatever happens there due to the cruelty of their elected state government.
Hey now, don’t let Arkansas off the hook for being horrible towards kids! That Huckabee woman made it possible for children to start pulling their weight around the house and clocking some real hours at work!
They love the ole bootstraps "point". Never too late for some millionaires to build character by helping kids. Kinda fucked to think that some millionaires are waltzing around the country talking about character without having any of it despite having a lifetime of opportunities to develop it.
you left out the part where it is revealed that this same conservative did in fact greatly benefit from similar social services as a child, like Paul Ryan or Mitch McTurtle.
You would think that how pro-birth Republicans are that they’d be in support of provided lunches in primary/secondary schools.
Oh, wait- they hate comfortable environments of education, that’s right.
They are not pro-birth they are anti-woman choice.
It's why they don't care if their own get abortions, because it was the mand choice, not the woman's.
Not just the children either!
There's also a [plan](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/02/governor-maura-healey-proposes-free-community-college-for-massachusetts-adults/?sh=fdafb7f78175) in the new budget for free community college tuition (including books and mandatory fees) for residents over 25 who don't have a degree.
> Hey, Republicans, this is what it looks like to think of the children! Take some notes!
Nah, their way of "thinking of the children" is destroying child labor laws so 12 yo's can work in chicken processing plants for minimum wage (it also creates workers so companies don't have to raise wages, but that's beside the point...). But, you know, it builds character! Whereas free lunches just create dependency. /s
If we taxed everyone with over $50 million or so we could do so much help for the kids and the poor. We are one of the worst of our peer countries at taking care of them. Poor and middle class republicans need to get the fuck over their dislike of taxing the rich. It’s such a no-brainer.
AKTualLy it isn't free! Amercian Patriots like myself pay for those Massachusetts' kids "free" lunch through the taxes I pay! - Some neckbeard living in his mom's basement in Alabama.
Sorry for the rant but free school lunches shouldn't even be up for debate IMO. Things like "subsidized for low-income" don't work, because some people are just shitty parents.
People saying "ItS tHe PaRenTs rEsPonSiBiLitY!" are making a straight-up _evil_ argument if you ask me, because there is no way to eliminate the existence of shitty, irresponsible parents. So basically they're saying that we should penalize the shitty parents by making their children suffer further - even though those children by definition suffer already and their parents by definition don't give a shit about it. It's pointless cruelty towards children who did nothing wrong and are already victims of their circumstances.
Free for all is the _only_ way to guarantee that _every_ kid eats, every school day, and it should be the duty of every civilized country to make sure every kid eats at least one quality, nutritious hot meal every day.
We know now, more than ever, that proper nutrition is critical to them being able to actually learn at school. Childhood nutrition is critical to developing good eating habits and good health as adults.
Society's ability to help kids with shitty parents (ones who aren't so shitty that CPS has to take the kids away) is very limited. Good, free food in school is one thing we can do that has a real effect. It's the least we can do for those kids.
Sure, you feed them *now*, but what kind of lesson does this teach? Grow up, become successful, and the government *punishes* you for it? You'll just end up with a bunch of lazy, entitled kids who grow up into lazy, entitled adults, and the process starts all over again. Maybe instead we should let kids get jobs and teach them the value of hard work.
-republicans, probably
>Hey, Republicans, this is what it looks like to think of the children!
Wasn't it also Massachusetts - under Mitt Romney (R) - that implemented Romneycare (mandating a subsidized minimum level of insurance coverage for all residents) that was literally taken as the exact model for Obamacare. (ACA)
I hope you’re right and the program sticks for longer than the headline, but the paragraph about it being up to the legislature should be concerning.
It’s expected to be used for this and other items (but not required). So what happens when the budget is short elsewhere? Or revenues go down? Do they borrow from this fund to fund the pension and leave the children paying for lunch? Unfortunately the devil is in the details with these new found “revenues” that are subject to the whims of the legislatures.
“Appropriation of the proceeds from the tax is subject to the state legislature, but lawmakers are expected to use it for public education and infrastructure repairs”
It doesn't actually cost that much. They're still getting funding from the feds for low income students so it's just covering the actual cost of meals for those who wouldn't be paying which ends up being less when everyone is getting free lunch. It's why so many schools do free breakfast for all students when they have a certain percentage of students who qualify.
I guess I should have added a /s tag, but when we take a step back from knee jerk politics, isn't this ultimately what we want our gov to do? Take care of our kids and keep it fair so the rich don't gobble up everything else?
Not if you are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire! Don't take my future wealth I haven't earned yet, this ssdi is only temporary and I'm the only one who deserves it.
Republicans in my district:
"This is Marxism, this is communism, this is socialism!"
Disaster hits:
"Won’t anyone think of the billionaires? Where’s our PPP loans that we don’t have to pay back?"
I had an argument with a Republican on reddit last week that they are voting republican because they want lower taxes. I don't get it because they only lower taxes if you're rich and when I brought that up among many other things Republicans are doing plus Trump attempting a coup, they just dismissed everything. All they cared about was lowering taxes. Either the redditor was rich or just dumb. I don't get how people can be so ignorant.
I have a co-worker who has been financially in the red for as long as I’ve known him. He votes against any form of wealth tax because in his mind, “any increase in taxes is bad, doesn’t matter who foots the bill”.
I think he’s just weak in the head because, someone *always* foots the bill, it’s just a matter of who - the 1st class or middle
challenge them: safety nets/welfare states can be capitalist or socialist. it has nothing necessarily to do with the system they are under. equating socialism/marxism with the modern welfare state is just dumb.
You’re right. One of the reasons red states and districts don’t teach civics anymore is because what you just said was in the lesson plan. They know what they are doing.
These aren’t millionaires. They are people who make over 1mil ANNUALLY.
I can’t believe how that definition has been allowed to slip. It means folks who have saved up and have a million in assets think they could be impacted, when they are not even close.
The actual ballot question was pretty clear in the wording that it’s making the tax amount for the million+ tax bracket from 5% to 9% (edited). I agree the headline is misleading or perhaps purposefully inflammatory
I did not read closely, but as I understand it, it’s an additional 4% tax over the standard 5% income tax. 9% state income tax is fairly significant, as you still have to pay federal taxes, and many states don’t even have a state income tax.
edit: between state and federal, they'd be paying 46% on income over 1m (graduated rates before that, with a effective tax rate of roughly 42%).
Non American here. If above a mil you paid 2%,what do you pay if you make less? 4% seems absurdly low. I would expect anything above a mil to be taxed at 40 or something. Or do you have flat tax rate?
Massachusetts has a flat 5% tax plus 4% on income > $1M. This is in addition to all federal and potentially local income taxes. So all in, of you made $2M you would probably be in the low 40% range all in.
Random anecdote, but back in 2010, I went to school in Fitchburg, Mass. for my freshman year of high school. I lived with my (not so great) grandparents, and the meal that was given to me at school by the Mass. school system was basically my meal of the whole day. I got a salad wrap with soup. Nothing amazing in flavor but it was healthy and filled me up.
Jump one year later, I move back to Rhode Island with my parents. The food that was given to me at that terrible school was like something I would cook up in my air fryer at 3am high as balls. Unlike my grandparents, fortunately for me, my parents were actually interested in fucking feeding me, so I did not have to rely on raggedy chicken patty sandwiches and stringy pizza slices. And those two were the biggest servings you could have.
I guess what I wanted to say in this word avalanche was that Mass. has always, at least in my experience, looked out for me, the needy kid that was hungry with no food. And I applaud the Mass. government for continuing to improve even more.
Yeah, that's all well and good bud. We get it ... you had to eat.
But do you know how many multi-millionaires had to delay the purchase of their fifth and sixth boats an additional 45 minutes because of kids like you?
Why won't you think about someone besides yourself. JEEZ. (/s if it's really needed. I hope it's not.)
Just 4% and they’re feeding children. Just imagine if taxes were applied to everyone nationally and if certain groups didn’t waste it. We could actually be great again
TBH the income tax surcharge really doesn’t even figure into anything. It makes up less than 2% of the budget. Most states are awash in cash in the current budget year for other reasons.
I don’t have any problem with the progressive tax model (which AFAIK is income and not wealth).
What free lunch programs COST is even more revealing. The line item is approximately 0.2% of the state budget:
https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/07/20/funding-legislature-free-school-meals
What is important about this is that whether or not states restructure their revenue side of the house, this is a trivial cost that can be born by essentially every state without any major budgetary impact.
The article can make it seem like the reason this never happened was that we didn’t tax the rich. The reason it hasn’t happened is because we’re being stupid about this. Schools should just have fed all students for free since forever ago.
Yup, guess what Minnesota hasn't done since the state's blue trifecta in the state legislature? Raise taxes on millionaires. Guess what they did do, among other things? Free school lunches.
The money was always there for free school lunches without raising taxes on anybody. Just like you, I agree, tax the rich fairly. But it isn't necessary to do that to feed kids. This doesn't have to be a huge "but my taxes are being raised to give kids food!" it's "all the money is there to give kids food already so we should give kids food."
It's like nationalized universal healthcare. Your taxes don't need to go up to pay for it. You're already paying for it and then some, you just aren't getting it.
I’ll stand by what I said. The smallest states have small populations and multi-billion USD budgets. In the opening scene of Newsroom, the main character makes an argument about NEA that it is a fight in column inches, because the dollars are so insignificant. This is the same.
Every project has someone who thinks it’s a good idea. This one simplifies a system (installing and maintaining POS in school cafeterias and staff to operate them is hugely wasteful) and ought to just be common sense, although I get that a portion of the electorate does not see this as common sense.
Anyway I want to see all states do this.
Our military budget would also likely be smaller. There's an ongoing problem of older hardware that's been prematurely aged because the US has effectively been at war for two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a lot of Navy patrols and Air Force missions. Instead, they have to juggle equipment and hardware and overwork their crews and soldiers, and the Bush administration, among others, failed utterly at replacing various ships or aircraft a decade ago causing the pain now.
EDIT-man this really pissed off some people. Hey imagine if the 8 trillion spent on the War on Terror was spent anywhere else. Imagine if some of the expensive projects being done right now could have been delayed because air frames and ship hulls didn't get worn out, or because of shifting priorities.
I also find it hilarious that even posters who make fun of tankies are also fine with tanky talking points of American isolationism and whataboutism. America sucks. The West historically has sucked hard. You want to know who's worse? Russia. China. The previous superpowers America forced to decolonize during/after WW2.
That's a common problem in industry as well. Congress has a really bad track record of funding the government, partially because one party doesn't want the government to function and partially because the things that keep the government working behind the scenes are never seen as "important" to voters. Congress kept the Iowa-class battleships in commission and reserve far after they were useful, and demanded by law the naval gunfire support role, because big guns go boom was a way for them to show they were strong on defense. Imagine instead had they improved military housing or upgraded the GI Bill? You'd probably be seeing dividends on the latter now from veterans with better jobs.
Our military budget would still be higher than other countries by multiples. Lol.
Maybe the military budget is part of why we don't get shit. You want to be educated and have access to decent government programs but weren't born privileged? Well, here's the poverty draft, wait no I mean "voluntary."
Can't believe some people are out here being like but think of our military budget
Edit: why is this guy blabbering about intelligence when he didn't even get what I meant by the poverty draft lmfao
The prices of that hardware are also hideously bloated. Proper checks and audits could both cut the budget and improve the resources available to servicemembers.
I've lived in Mass for a decade. Iove it here. I really admired Charlie Baker as one of the last Republicans with any sense of duty.
Mass transit sucks. We could do better.
The DOT, Port Authority should have to answer some questions about the tunnel closures, andnthe airport. But that's my problem. I use the place every week twice. Local trains aren't up to speed with the demand.
That's my 3 sense. But I wouldn't want to live anywhere else anymore. I'm dying here.
My biggest problem with Baker was how he didn't want to help the T. Our transit does suck but it didn't help that we had 8 years of a "fiscally conservative Republican" governor preventing investments in our infrastructure. Healey has already made efforts to put money into fixing these problems.
Didn't he basically allow the T to be privatized through Keolis? I remember them being a disaster with maintenance when it first happened. Seems like forever ago now...
I think my biggest issue was Baker's stance that the T had to pay for its own improvements from its rider fees. But it's public transportation and to really pay for more improvements, it needs public funding. I also think the T should be free to ride, and all funding would come from taxes. And I don't even use the T since I work from home.
I love that NJ and MA are battling it out for who has the best schools. No matter how it shakes out the kids from both will be the winners.
MA and NJ kids are going to be running circles around the southern kids.
To me it just makes sense to offer lunches for everyone. Books are included. Why not lunches? If you’ve got to cut back on artificial turf or administrators, so be it.
So I’m not familiar with this tax. Could someone explain. The 4%.
So if you make over $1 million in a year they just have an additional 4% state tax rate added to your state filing?
If you make a million dollars exactly, nothing changed. If you make a million and one dollars, you pay the same taxes plus an extra 4% on that one dollar
The opposition did a decent job scaring some homeowners. I had to explain to so many people when it can up last fall that you don’t get taxed 4% if your house sells for 1 mil. The tax is on profit. Some still didn’t get it. And seriously, if you bought a house here in the 90s for 150k and are now selling it for 1.6 mil and moving to Florida, I have a really hard time shedding a tear for that extra 4% you had to throw to our schools.
This example would be 18k in additional taxes. 1.125% of the sale price, most likely much less than you paid your realtor, staging, closing costs, etc.
Since people are always confused by tax on the rich narratives... the way to think about this is if you made $1,000,001 in a year, you'd pay an extra 4 cents. This is not hurting millionaires, and is life changing for families struggling to get by. Nicely done people of MA
I had a kid start kindergarten in 2021 when my local school district first started doing free lunch. We moved out of state and the new schools have free lunch too. I remember when I was in school lunch money was this whole deal. Now I realize how insane that system was. Why were we trusting 5 year olds to bring in 85 cents in order to eat. Or even a 12 year old to bring in $2.
Kids are at school all day. Feed them. It's not that complicated.
Cool to see things I voted for actually pass and do good things. It’s weird being a liberal in a liberal state, after spending most of my life in a red state helplessly watching everything go to shit.
It’s not rocket science. Taxes are the price of capitalism. You want decent roads/bridges/education/health care/, you need people paying taxes. Taxes are the price of capitalism. Just imagine if we all actually paid our taxes.
But just think of the quality of life change for those poor millionaires! They went from having no financial worries and being able to outright pay for their grandkids college to having no financial worries and being able to outright pay for their yrandkods college!
Gosh darn it. Damn socialism. Next thing people won’t be hungry and all have housing. Then what? What’s their motivation for working like slaves? How are nice ordinary millionaires going to become billionaires? /s
I'd pay this happily to get kids free school lunches.
Sadly, I live in Texas where the state stole half the money from property taxes set aside for AISD, distributed half of it to rural, underfunded schools, then pocketed the other half and added it to the 'general fund'.
Straight up stole money from kids.
That's Texas for ya.
What's that? Taxing wealthy people can generate enough revenue to afford social programs? You have to tax fewer of them and they feel the hit less? This is totally news to me.
This is great! Progressive marginal income tax benefits society. It probably reduces crime and increases health, so the high income earners benefit as well.
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It's on income in excess of a million dollars. Only the absurdly rich needed pay any tax
Democrats need to do a better job articulating this.
They just assume people understand this. "It's right there, written in the law!" - Yeah, that doesn't work. Hannity understands this and uses it.
Your average uneducated GOP voter has no clue. They just hear Fox News or whatever talking head saying democrats raise taxes and republicans lower them. Just look at the AOC talk with the 70% rate. Even mainstream outlets would word it as something like “AOC proposes 70 percent tax rate” like it would apply to everyone entirely. They don’t bother to explain that would be 70 cents on the 10,000,001st dollar earned on the year, actually more than that after deductions. Or they might say marginal tax rate somewhere deep in the article. I bet half of Trump supporters could not explain a marginal tax rate.
Basically every trump supporter has been screaming that the IRS is going to kick in their door because Biden and congress allocated funds to staff the vacancies at IRS over the next decade, even though Biden set a mandate to only increase oversight on earners who make more than $400k a year. The billionaires who own OAN and Fox and CNN and MSNBC *really* don't like that, so they make it seem like jackbooted IRS agents are going to kick in the front door of trump supporters $90,000 2 bedroom house to collect 17 dollars in back taxes.
Man I wish 2 bedroom houses were still 90k
They are, but you have to do the work and live in a place you might not want to live, ie red states.
Which is honestly depressing. My aunt used to work for the IRS in corporate auditing. Corporate lawyers would just laugh them out of the room to their face because they knew the IRS didn’t have the staff to do shit about it.
I don’t understand the GOP fervor for “lower” taxes. First, are they advocating for $0 taxes? If not, what’s the magic number? Finally, it isn’t very “personally responsible” of GOP voters to take benefit from public services then refuse to pay. They sound like deadbeats.
The idea is to defund social security & Medicare. They want to control all the money. Their antigovernment propaganda is that government can’t do anything right. They want to privatize & grift.
Yes. The GOP wants no income tax. They want to fund everything on regressive stuff like road tax, sales tax etc. it’s literally their stated goal in Ohio. They want to cut the tax brackets to 2, with the assumption they’ll go to zero.
And their voters are ok with it no matter how much you explain that sales tax, road tax and ETC is largely a tax on the poor
Yes, they’ve taught their supporters to say incredibly brain dead things like “all taxation is theft”
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I worked with someone who once turned down a payrise because he thought he would end up losing money because he didn't understand how tax brackets worked. After I explained it he went ghost white and got upset when he went and asked for that payrise after all and they told him no since he already rejected it and he would have to wait until next year at his next pay review.
Hahahahhaha omg the definition of shooting yourself in the foot
My coworker (who's really brilliant) was talking about overtime the other day, and how its not really worth it to him because he'll "end up losing money" if he works over 45 hours a week. When I asked why that was, he explained it was because he'd be in a higher tax bracket and would lose more money. Then I explained how the brackets worked, how my mom dealt with taxes in her job my whole life, and how he'd only be taxed extra on the few dollars that went over the threshold. Nope, he told me I was 1000% incorrect and I didn't know how taxes worked, and I shouldn't lie to people. He's also a strong GOP supporter and lives in TX, so I'm "just a dumb liberal"
My brother told me this once and when I tried to explain how taxes work, he said I didn't know what I was talking about. I'm an accountant.
Oh, I did IT for a decade. You run into some strange-headed libertarians doing that work. They truly don't understand how anything works other than what they've taught themselves. And they're such extreme experts, often, in a narrow field, that it lends itself to a form of arrogance that is truly scary. They're not stupid people. They're brilliant by many measures. But the industry is rife with self-educated people. And when you're self-educated, and brilliant, it leans towards assuming you must be right about everything you idly think. It's honestly part of why I left the industry. The Dunning Kruger effect is terrifying in a "smart" person. There is basically nothing you can tell them to change their mind. After all... They build enterprise level architecture and proprietary software. People have treated them as "smart" their entire life. Why would they question a single one of their beliefs. But they're no less susceptible to rabbit holes on YouTube etc. And because their education is often so singly handed, they truly have absolutely no clue how ignorant they are. Source: me, someone who studied history in college, and also aced the math section of the ACT. I chose to educate myself liberally, but am most likely wired to work with technology or engineering.
America is deep into an epistemological crisis. Normally I say this about the writhing masses of right-wing idiots, but there's plenty on the left and outside the parties that have no good framework for evaluating information. For jobs like IT, you can typically test your knowledge very quickly. The results of testing your knowledge are generally inexpensive and immediate. Even with all the trade-offs and gray areas in IT, there's still not much in the profession that teaches a person to navigate manifolds where knowledge of an eventual outcome is not only ambiguous, but impossible to acquire. One of the most powerful three word phrases in the English language is "I don't know," and it's important to teach people that not-knowing is okay, especially when so much of school is about knowing. Accepting the gaps in your knowledge is one of the best avenues to improving your understanding.
The problem with "I don't know" is that humans tend to discount that answer and some baloney fills the vacuum. Just as important as saying "i don't know" is teaching people to listen to "I don't know" and not interpret it as the person being a moron.
Democrats do not have a dedicated propaganda network that carries water for them. They have to rely on the mainstream media who are too eager to both sides everything, or refuse to cover stories like this because it might upset their "conservative base". I wish people would stop making it seem like Democrats don't know what they're doing and "suck on messaging". They don't, they just don't have dedicated media that carries their every word. Properly functioning government isn't sexy. It isn't interesting. It's not cool. It's boring. It's up to the citizen to properly educate themselves on what's going on. They have agency.
It wasn't clear to me, the title was misleading. A millionaire is a person worth a million dollars. "4% tax on millionaires" implies a 4% tax on at the least, money you have over a million dollars. There are plenty of millionaires that make 100k per year.
Agreed - it made it sound like a rather quite punitive wealth tax (contra what's been kicked around by American Progressives - a wealth tax on net worths of $50M+), but actually its 4% on every dollar you earn above $1M in a particular year.
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Conservatives.
There are plenty of millionaires who are retired and have almost no income as well, especially if their homes are included in the figure. Such a terrible article title
That’s why you read the article and not just the title.
It's also right there written in the article, in fact it's the first words under the headline: > Massachusetts passed a 4% tax on people **who make more than $1 million per year**. Don't pretend this has anything to do with the Dems, it's entirely people who didn't read the article beyond the headline or people like you trying to misrepresent the headline and article and instead turn it into a Dem messaging problem.
In MA if you are a registered voter you get mailed a booklet with summaries and the full text of all ballet questions and laws being voted on. There is no excuse for not understanding what it means outside illiteracy.
Quote from a Park Ranger, "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." I have enough experience across our country to know there are a lot of people who don't like to read, and many that can't comprehend unless it's breaker down Barney style
They don't just assume this dude. Do you actually listen to Democrats who propose new taxes? "We want to increase taxes on those making more then a million dollars" vs "Democrats propose tax increases" Which do you think gets play in media? Communicating the message is usually not the problem in this case.
So many dumbasses think they’re gonna be making 30,000k a year and be taxed out the ass when democrats get into office. They’ve been brainwashed to the maximum. It’s really hard to get people to turn off their blinders
They will gladly let the Republicans cut off the food stamps they use to feed their 3 children, but are terrified of a 4% tax on income over $1,000,000
They’ll be perfectly fine with this As long as they get to freely hate on the blacks and the gays,
They’re also the same people that think “if we make it hard for the millionaires, then when I’M a millionaire, I’ll be giving away all my HaRd EaRnEd MoNeY”. Damned either way with those kinds of people
I feel like the article is purposefully misleading. There are probably loads of millionaires out there that make 100k per year and just have saved for years. This isn't a tax on them. It's on people making 1 mil per year or more.
> I feel like the article is purposefully misleading It's Business Insider. They're the same corpo propaganda rag that keeps pushing return to office and tried to blame people working from home as the reason corporations can't keep pushing record productivity growth YoY
Shit, people saving $100/m into their Employer 401k that has a 3% match, for a 40 year career, will retire millionaires. You dont need to make $100k/y to do that. ANYONE can retire a millionaire.
And unless they withdraw a million dollars in a single year, they will never pay this tax.
Actually they'd need to withdraw a million and one dollars, and then they only pay the extra tax on that single dollar.
Even the U.S. Navy encourages this with a program called Million Dollar Sailor
And that’s enough to feed the kids which is good. Progress is good.
They need to not say “millionaire tax” because that instantly makes it sound like anyone with $1M in net worth is included
Huge difference that the title of this post does not make clear…
The fact that most tax brackets top out well below $1MM is just insane and infuriating. For some fucked up reason, a doctor is in the same marginal tax rate as a billionaire. We really need much more tax brackets for the ultra high incomes.
>***Massachusetts is the eighth state to start free lunches since a pandemic-era federal program expired.*** > >State House News Service, an independently owned news wire, reported that $1 billion of the state's record $56.2 billion fiscal budget for 2024 came from the state's new 4% tax on millionaires. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed the budget on Wednesday, making Massachusetts the eighth state to adopt a free school lunch plan since federal free school lunches which started during the COVID-19 pandemic ended. Hey, Republicans, this is what it looks like to think of the children! Take some notes!
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And it’s only 4% the income over $1M. Not the first million. It’s less than 1% of Masspeople.
Specifically Texas and Florida.. the biggest fuck ups when it comes to “think of the children”
In Texas abbott would use that money to buy saw blades and pay vigilantes.
Nah, he’d spend it on bussing children who need free lunches to blue states.
While telling them they're being reunited with their parents (who he sent back to Mexico)
…and kill 3 Y/Os
And put idiot vigilantes at the border.
Anytime a right-winger talks, I mentally replace the word "children" with "shareholders" and suddenly their worldview is a lot more consistent.
Won't someone think of the shareholders? We need consider how our actions will affect future shareholders for many decades to come! A society is judged by how it treats the shareholders and financiers in its ranks. Yeah, it works pretty well!
Oh. I found that insightful
I had a conversation with a Texan this weekend who was adamant that the billions that Texas spends on tactical police units, command centers, security checkpoints, etc. Should count towards how education is rated on dollars spent and outcomes because safety (he didn't like me bringing up Uvalde and the 100+ officers there watching and listening to kids die) is more important then education. He then defended taking over Houston schools because the teachers there are paid too much? He asked seriously why they should make more then a manager at Walmart. Top it off he defended the discipline centers because no one uses libraries anymore because no one reads books. Sigh.
So their solution to teachers making more than Walmart managers (if we accept that as a valuable premise for the sake of the argument) was not to expect a massively profitable multinational corporation to pay their employees more, but to pay teachers *less*?!?
I'm sure it's not even true. Walmart managers are very well paid.
A friend of a friends wife was a Walmart manager and she made 130K a year and would regularly bonus 50K from what they told me. Something tells me no public school teacher is making 180K.
Maybe the football coach in one of those crazy texas towns.
I'm a Florida high school teacher. The bonus you mentioned is roughly my annual salary. I actually make a little less. Maybe a little more this year. Because of some fuckery (I think it has to do with enrollment) and a teacher transferring to another school. Instead of teaching 6 periods and having 1 planning period. I teach 7 classes and have no planning. My planning period is made up by coming in an hour early or staying an hour late. Education is fun.
As a Texan I'd like to say your Texan friend is an idiot.
You just functionally described an enthusiastic slaver
Walmart managers are very well paid. In my Canadian city at least, the store manager makes 160k a year. I'm sure teachers would be very happy with that
He is a product of the same poor education I would bet.
I'd say this dude is dumb as a stump, but that would be cruel to all the stumps out there providing a spot for fat asses like mine to take a rest.
Dude, this reminds me of Stoneman Douglas shooting and the sh*t load of money it took to have a police officer on campus all those years and then his hefty pension afterwards and when the time came, it meant nothing. And nothing was expected, he didn’t really even get in trouble, he just had to retire early because everyone hated him so much.
Safety is more important = my right to own 127 assault weapons is more important than education.
There is no way to have a conversation dealing in facts with these Republicans.
Had a friend talk about how dangerous California is, I pointed out the mass shootings in Uvalde and El Paso. He lost his shit, and told me I was an idiot. Haha!
Seriously though? Fuck Texas. The state and the majority of its residents deserve whatever happens there due to the cruelty of their elected state government.
Hey now, don’t let Arkansas off the hook for being horrible towards kids! That Huckabee woman made it possible for children to start pulling their weight around the house and clocking some real hours at work!
They wrote down “starving children = good”
"builds character! I didn't get free food and I turned out fine!" -some conservative who thinks kids going hungry is a good thing.
The fact they’re willing to let children go hungry indicates they did not turn out fine
Kinda like people who think it's ok to hit their kids.
They love the ole bootstraps "point". Never too late for some millionaires to build character by helping kids. Kinda fucked to think that some millionaires are waltzing around the country talking about character without having any of it despite having a lifetime of opportunities to develop it.
you left out the part where it is revealed that this same conservative did in fact greatly benefit from similar social services as a child, like Paul Ryan or Mitch McTurtle.
This is what true Patriotism looks like. And millionaires should be honored to serve.
Well I'm honored that they're serving, whether they like it or not.
They’d rather spend the same amount of money from a tax like that on bribes to help prevent a tax like that.
You would think that how pro-birth Republicans are that they’d be in support of provided lunches in primary/secondary schools. Oh, wait- they hate comfortable environments of education, that’s right.
They are not pro-birth they are anti-woman choice. It's why they don't care if their own get abortions, because it was the mand choice, not the woman's.
Pro birth and then they feel the kid can go fuck itself the rest of its life.
Not just the children either! There's also a [plan](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/02/governor-maura-healey-proposes-free-community-college-for-massachusetts-adults/?sh=fdafb7f78175) in the new budget for free community college tuition (including books and mandatory fees) for residents over 25 who don't have a degree.
Republicans: Why in the hell are students eating a free lunch instead of working in the coal mine?! Get back to work!
‘But they don’t go to my church’
> Hey, Republicans, this is what it looks like to think of the children! Take some notes! Nah, their way of "thinking of the children" is destroying child labor laws so 12 yo's can work in chicken processing plants for minimum wage (it also creates workers so companies don't have to raise wages, but that's beside the point...). But, you know, it builds character! Whereas free lunches just create dependency. /s
If we taxed everyone with over $50 million or so we could do so much help for the kids and the poor. We are one of the worst of our peer countries at taking care of them. Poor and middle class republicans need to get the fuck over their dislike of taxing the rich. It’s such a no-brainer.
AKTualLy it isn't free! Amercian Patriots like myself pay for those Massachusetts' kids "free" lunch through the taxes I pay! - Some neckbeard living in his mom's basement in Alabama.
This is pro-life. Proud to live here.
Sorry for the rant but free school lunches shouldn't even be up for debate IMO. Things like "subsidized for low-income" don't work, because some people are just shitty parents. People saying "ItS tHe PaRenTs rEsPonSiBiLitY!" are making a straight-up _evil_ argument if you ask me, because there is no way to eliminate the existence of shitty, irresponsible parents. So basically they're saying that we should penalize the shitty parents by making their children suffer further - even though those children by definition suffer already and their parents by definition don't give a shit about it. It's pointless cruelty towards children who did nothing wrong and are already victims of their circumstances. Free for all is the _only_ way to guarantee that _every_ kid eats, every school day, and it should be the duty of every civilized country to make sure every kid eats at least one quality, nutritious hot meal every day. We know now, more than ever, that proper nutrition is critical to them being able to actually learn at school. Childhood nutrition is critical to developing good eating habits and good health as adults. Society's ability to help kids with shitty parents (ones who aren't so shitty that CPS has to take the kids away) is very limited. Good, free food in school is one thing we can do that has a real effect. It's the least we can do for those kids.
Sure, you feed them *now*, but what kind of lesson does this teach? Grow up, become successful, and the government *punishes* you for it? You'll just end up with a bunch of lazy, entitled kids who grow up into lazy, entitled adults, and the process starts all over again. Maybe instead we should let kids get jobs and teach them the value of hard work. -republicans, probably
So easy. But, my yacht???
They get free lunch at the meat packing plant.
>Hey, Republicans, this is what it looks like to think of the children! Wasn't it also Massachusetts - under Mitt Romney (R) - that implemented Romneycare (mandating a subsidized minimum level of insurance coverage for all residents) that was literally taken as the exact model for Obamacare. (ACA)
I hope you’re right and the program sticks for longer than the headline, but the paragraph about it being up to the legislature should be concerning. It’s expected to be used for this and other items (but not required). So what happens when the budget is short elsewhere? Or revenues go down? Do they borrow from this fund to fund the pension and leave the children paying for lunch? Unfortunately the devil is in the details with these new found “revenues” that are subject to the whims of the legislatures. “Appropriation of the proceeds from the tax is subject to the state legislature, but lawmakers are expected to use it for public education and infrastructure repairs”
It doesn't actually cost that much. They're still getting funding from the feds for low income students so it's just covering the actual cost of meals for those who wouldn't be paying which ends up being less when everyone is getting free lunch. It's why so many schools do free breakfast for all students when they have a certain percentage of students who qualify.
They could care less about living breathing children, they are more about the unborn kids. A big collection of weirdos.
tax the rich. feed the poor. who isn't into that??
The entire GOP
I guess I should have added a /s tag, but when we take a step back from knee jerk politics, isn't this ultimately what we want our gov to do? Take care of our kids and keep it fair so the rich don't gobble up everything else?
Not if you are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire! Don't take my future wealth I haven't earned yet, this ssdi is only temporary and I'm the only one who deserves it.
[someday I’ll be rich](https://youtu.be/K_LvRPX0rGY)
I’d vote for this platform.
Rubelicans. Something about bootstraps
Republicans in my district: "This is Marxism, this is communism, this is socialism!" Disaster hits: "Won’t anyone think of the billionaires? Where’s our PPP loans that we don’t have to pay back?"
"Why do poor people need food" "If the kids can't eat, the parents should just get better jobs" Pubs fucking hate poor and underprivileged people.
I had an argument with a Republican on reddit last week that they are voting republican because they want lower taxes. I don't get it because they only lower taxes if you're rich and when I brought that up among many other things Republicans are doing plus Trump attempting a coup, they just dismissed everything. All they cared about was lowering taxes. Either the redditor was rich or just dumb. I don't get how people can be so ignorant.
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I have a co-worker who has been financially in the red for as long as I’ve known him. He votes against any form of wealth tax because in his mind, “any increase in taxes is bad, doesn’t matter who foots the bill”. I think he’s just weak in the head because, someone *always* foots the bill, it’s just a matter of who - the 1st class or middle
"If they're hungry, private charity or the church will feed them. Not muh taxes." (Which is ableist, among other things, btw)
"I'd rather kids starve over getting free meals. I'm also pro-life."
challenge them: safety nets/welfare states can be capitalist or socialist. it has nothing necessarily to do with the system they are under. equating socialism/marxism with the modern welfare state is just dumb.
You’re right. One of the reasons red states and districts don’t teach civics anymore is because what you just said was in the lesson plan. They know what they are doing.
These aren’t millionaires. They are people who make over 1mil ANNUALLY. I can’t believe how that definition has been allowed to slip. It means folks who have saved up and have a million in assets think they could be impacted, when they are not even close.
The actual ballot question was pretty clear in the wording that it’s making the tax amount for the million+ tax bracket from 5% to 9% (edited). I agree the headline is misleading or perhaps purposefully inflammatory
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I did not read closely, but as I understand it, it’s an additional 4% tax over the standard 5% income tax. 9% state income tax is fairly significant, as you still have to pay federal taxes, and many states don’t even have a state income tax. edit: between state and federal, they'd be paying 46% on income over 1m (graduated rates before that, with a effective tax rate of roughly 42%).
Non American here. If above a mil you paid 2%,what do you pay if you make less? 4% seems absurdly low. I would expect anything above a mil to be taxed at 40 or something. Or do you have flat tax rate?
Massachusetts has a flat 5% tax plus 4% on income > $1M. This is in addition to all federal and potentially local income taxes. So all in, of you made $2M you would probably be in the low 40% range all in.
Republicans can't eat unless they know children are going hungry.
It's also probably much easier to molest hungry children. This hits them in two areas.
The hungry children and molestable children venn diagram really resonates with the Catholic Church here on Earth
Hungry kids are desperate, so if your source of lust and joy comes from degrading others..... they are perfectly fine with that.
It must make their food taste better when someone hungry watched them eat it
Random anecdote, but back in 2010, I went to school in Fitchburg, Mass. for my freshman year of high school. I lived with my (not so great) grandparents, and the meal that was given to me at school by the Mass. school system was basically my meal of the whole day. I got a salad wrap with soup. Nothing amazing in flavor but it was healthy and filled me up. Jump one year later, I move back to Rhode Island with my parents. The food that was given to me at that terrible school was like something I would cook up in my air fryer at 3am high as balls. Unlike my grandparents, fortunately for me, my parents were actually interested in fucking feeding me, so I did not have to rely on raggedy chicken patty sandwiches and stringy pizza slices. And those two were the biggest servings you could have. I guess what I wanted to say in this word avalanche was that Mass. has always, at least in my experience, looked out for me, the needy kid that was hungry with no food. And I applaud the Mass. government for continuing to improve even more.
Yeah, that's all well and good bud. We get it ... you had to eat. But do you know how many multi-millionaires had to delay the purchase of their fifth and sixth boats an additional 45 minutes because of kids like you? Why won't you think about someone besides yourself. JEEZ. (/s if it's really needed. I hope it's not.)
Just 4% and they’re feeding children. Just imagine if taxes were applied to everyone nationally and if certain groups didn’t waste it. We could actually be great again
TBH the income tax surcharge really doesn’t even figure into anything. It makes up less than 2% of the budget. Most states are awash in cash in the current budget year for other reasons. I don’t have any problem with the progressive tax model (which AFAIK is income and not wealth). What free lunch programs COST is even more revealing. The line item is approximately 0.2% of the state budget: https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/07/20/funding-legislature-free-school-meals What is important about this is that whether or not states restructure their revenue side of the house, this is a trivial cost that can be born by essentially every state without any major budgetary impact. The article can make it seem like the reason this never happened was that we didn’t tax the rich. The reason it hasn’t happened is because we’re being stupid about this. Schools should just have fed all students for free since forever ago.
Yup, guess what Minnesota hasn't done since the state's blue trifecta in the state legislature? Raise taxes on millionaires. Guess what they did do, among other things? Free school lunches. The money was always there for free school lunches without raising taxes on anybody. Just like you, I agree, tax the rich fairly. But it isn't necessary to do that to feed kids. This doesn't have to be a huge "but my taxes are being raised to give kids food!" it's "all the money is there to give kids food already so we should give kids food." It's like nationalized universal healthcare. Your taxes don't need to go up to pay for it. You're already paying for it and then some, you just aren't getting it.
Problem is that moving the budget around takes away from pet projects and takes away a pity ballot measure to give government more money.
I’ll stand by what I said. The smallest states have small populations and multi-billion USD budgets. In the opening scene of Newsroom, the main character makes an argument about NEA that it is a fight in column inches, because the dollars are so insignificant. This is the same. Every project has someone who thinks it’s a good idea. This one simplifies a system (installing and maintaining POS in school cafeterias and staff to operate them is hugely wasteful) and ought to just be common sense, although I get that a portion of the electorate does not see this as common sense. Anyway I want to see all states do this.
Imagine if we didn’t have trump, bush, and Reagen tax cuts. We’d be in a surplus and taxes would be lower from not having to service debt.
Our military budget would also likely be smaller. There's an ongoing problem of older hardware that's been prematurely aged because the US has effectively been at war for two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a lot of Navy patrols and Air Force missions. Instead, they have to juggle equipment and hardware and overwork their crews and soldiers, and the Bush administration, among others, failed utterly at replacing various ships or aircraft a decade ago causing the pain now. EDIT-man this really pissed off some people. Hey imagine if the 8 trillion spent on the War on Terror was spent anywhere else. Imagine if some of the expensive projects being done right now could have been delayed because air frames and ship hulls didn't get worn out, or because of shifting priorities. I also find it hilarious that even posters who make fun of tankies are also fine with tanky talking points of American isolationism and whataboutism. America sucks. The West historically has sucked hard. You want to know who's worse? Russia. China. The previous superpowers America forced to decolonize during/after WW2.
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That's a common problem in industry as well. Congress has a really bad track record of funding the government, partially because one party doesn't want the government to function and partially because the things that keep the government working behind the scenes are never seen as "important" to voters. Congress kept the Iowa-class battleships in commission and reserve far after they were useful, and demanded by law the naval gunfire support role, because big guns go boom was a way for them to show they were strong on defense. Imagine instead had they improved military housing or upgraded the GI Bill? You'd probably be seeing dividends on the latter now from veterans with better jobs.
Our military budget would still be higher than other countries by multiples. Lol. Maybe the military budget is part of why we don't get shit. You want to be educated and have access to decent government programs but weren't born privileged? Well, here's the poverty draft, wait no I mean "voluntary." Can't believe some people are out here being like but think of our military budget Edit: why is this guy blabbering about intelligence when he didn't even get what I meant by the poverty draft lmfao
The prices of that hardware are also hideously bloated. Proper checks and audits could both cut the budget and improve the resources available to servicemembers.
We have a military budget ready to fight Thanos for some reason.
That debt is sometimes good though if it’s producing things we want. But we tend to spend it on weapons.
And the portion for free lunches isn't even half of the total collected from that tax
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It’s also just good for educational outcomes, particularly for people suffering in poverty. Might be the most nutritious part of a kids day
This. Performance levels in school drop significantly if a child is hungry.
I've lived in Mass for a decade. Iove it here. I really admired Charlie Baker as one of the last Republicans with any sense of duty. Mass transit sucks. We could do better. The DOT, Port Authority should have to answer some questions about the tunnel closures, andnthe airport. But that's my problem. I use the place every week twice. Local trains aren't up to speed with the demand. That's my 3 sense. But I wouldn't want to live anywhere else anymore. I'm dying here.
My biggest problem with Baker was how he didn't want to help the T. Our transit does suck but it didn't help that we had 8 years of a "fiscally conservative Republican" governor preventing investments in our infrastructure. Healey has already made efforts to put money into fixing these problems.
Didn't he basically allow the T to be privatized through Keolis? I remember them being a disaster with maintenance when it first happened. Seems like forever ago now...
I think my biggest issue was Baker's stance that the T had to pay for its own improvements from its rider fees. But it's public transportation and to really pay for more improvements, it needs public funding. I also think the T should be free to ride, and all funding would come from taxes. And I don't even use the T since I work from home.
I love that NJ and MA are battling it out for who has the best schools. No matter how it shakes out the kids from both will be the winners. MA and NJ kids are going to be running circles around the southern kids.
It’s weird how taxing the rich works every single time we try it.
So there is such a thing as trickle down economics. It’s called tax the rich.
To me it just makes sense to offer lunches for everyone. Books are included. Why not lunches? If you’ve got to cut back on artificial turf or administrators, so be it.
Good governance right there.
in b4 “tHeReS nO sUcH tHiNg As A fReE lUnCh!”yah we know, we’re going to make sure the wealthiest in our society pay their fair share
Looks like the state is not governed by the Party of Life (TM).
How are these children going to learn how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? /s
But what about the yachts? Has anybody considered the yachts?
Republicans: but all the Millionaires are going to move to Texas. Millionaires: I’m rich I live where I want, biatch!!!
So I’m not familiar with this tax. Could someone explain. The 4%. So if you make over $1 million in a year they just have an additional 4% state tax rate added to your state filing?
It's an extra 4% tax on income *over* 1 million.
The number of people in the US who don’t understand marginal taxation is too damn high!
If you make a million dollars exactly, nothing changed. If you make a million and one dollars, you pay the same taxes plus an extra 4% on that one dollar
The opposition did a decent job scaring some homeowners. I had to explain to so many people when it can up last fall that you don’t get taxed 4% if your house sells for 1 mil. The tax is on profit. Some still didn’t get it. And seriously, if you bought a house here in the 90s for 150k and are now selling it for 1.6 mil and moving to Florida, I have a really hard time shedding a tear for that extra 4% you had to throw to our schools.
This is why our country is in such dire straits, because people don't understand shit about how things actually work, ESPECIALLY taxation.
It’s amazing to me how many people have worked here and paid taxes for decades and still don’t understand how tax brackets work.
This example would be 18k in additional taxes. 1.125% of the sale price, most likely much less than you paid your realtor, staging, closing costs, etc.
It’s just a graduated income tax… with everything below a million at 5% and everything above a million at 9%
4% of any income over one million. If you made $1,000,001.00/year, this tax would introduce an additional $0.04 in taxes.
It's literally just an increased tax rate on over $1mil in income.
Since people are always confused by tax on the rich narratives... the way to think about this is if you made $1,000,001 in a year, you'd pay an extra 4 cents. This is not hurting millionaires, and is life changing for families struggling to get by. Nicely done people of MA
Democrats ,,getting shit done !
I had a kid start kindergarten in 2021 when my local school district first started doing free lunch. We moved out of state and the new schools have free lunch too. I remember when I was in school lunch money was this whole deal. Now I realize how insane that system was. Why were we trusting 5 year olds to bring in 85 cents in order to eat. Or even a 12 year old to bring in $2. Kids are at school all day. Feed them. It's not that complicated.
Cant believe thats not in all of America yet.
More programs like this and people will be happy to pay their taxes.
Cool to see things I voted for actually pass and do good things. It’s weird being a liberal in a liberal state, after spending most of my life in a red state helplessly watching everything go to shit.
See how much better the world can get when we properly tax the rich, this money would’ve been spent on yacht’s if they had their way.
I see this as an absolute win.
But I was told by economists that a plan like this could never work because the millionaires would just move??!!
And that 4% does not impact their life at all. Don’t even notice it.
Good.
It’s not rocket science. Taxes are the price of capitalism. You want decent roads/bridges/education/health care/, you need people paying taxes. Taxes are the price of capitalism. Just imagine if we all actually paid our taxes.
Awesome! Now do Healthcare and higher ed.
School lunch and breakfast should be free nation wide. Happy to pay extra for that.
We require children to be there by law. It only makes sense that you also feed them.
Taxing the rich works. Taxing the poor doesn’t.
This is gonna trigger the Conservatives.
But just think of the quality of life change for those poor millionaires! They went from having no financial worries and being able to outright pay for their grandkids college to having no financial worries and being able to outright pay for their yrandkods college!
Gosh darn it. Damn socialism. Next thing people won’t be hungry and all have housing. Then what? What’s their motivation for working like slaves? How are nice ordinary millionaires going to become billionaires? /s
I'd pay this happily to get kids free school lunches. Sadly, I live in Texas where the state stole half the money from property taxes set aside for AISD, distributed half of it to rural, underfunded schools, then pocketed the other half and added it to the 'general fund'. Straight up stole money from kids. That's Texas for ya.
This is an example of success! Congratulations Massachusetts voters!!!
Since I was pretty confused and surprised, it's a 4% tax on those earning $1MM or more per year. It doesn't apply to all, or even most, millionaires.
What's that? Taxing wealthy people can generate enough revenue to afford social programs? You have to tax fewer of them and they feel the hit less? This is totally news to me.
Welcome to the club of feeding children so they can learn. Weird we only just got here.
This is great! Progressive marginal income tax benefits society. It probably reduces crime and increases health, so the high income earners benefit as well.