4 ms·

The Economist is up in arms with the new Britain "let's tax the rich too" , for instance -out of many articles- http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cf

The Economist is up in arms with the new Britain "let's tax the rich too" , for instance -out of many articles- http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15127107 http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...

electromagnetic 17y ago
The rich should be taxed. After all, when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money, they should be paying 80% of any nation's taxes too. If they're not, the system is unfairly biased to keeping the rich rich. If you can pay $1 million in income tax in a single year, I figure you're doing fucking amazing out of life and it's where any entrepreneur should want to be in life.
- chwolfe 17y ago
  "when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money" Who exactly are the rich "taking" money from in general? Creating wealth is not a zero-sum game. If you insert the word "earning" in the above phrase, the argument you present loses some luster.
  - jmillikin 17y ago
    If I "earn" a dollar, where did that dollar come from? If my company paid me, they are poorer by $1. If the government paid me, the aggregate citizenry is poorer by $1. If the government printed it, the total value of US dollars in circulation has decreased by $1. Technically, activities like mining precious metals or gems could count as creating wealth, but obviously basing an economy on an arbitrarily-priced material as silver or gold is a bad idea. Anybody who believes gold isn't a fiat currency is mad. The most successful way that governments seem to have found to tax the wealthy is inflation, which is a "tax" on liquid currency. But there's ways for the wealthy to avoid inflation which aren't available to the working class, such as buying various foreign currencies. A direct tax, rather than "stealth" taxes, is a healthier and more sustainable choice.
    - ewanmcteagle 17y ago
      I'm sorry but this is terribly thoughtless. When you are given something the giver may be impoverished (ignoring any pleasure they get from giving) but when you provide a service or sell something both sides are happy. One receives the money they want more than the good/service and the other receives the good/service they want more than the money. Both are enriched. Without understanding this miracle you cannot understand many things about the world. This is why we don't still live in caves and spend all our time gathering food. Gold is not wealth. It is only because it can be exchanged for a good or service that can be consumed that it has any value.
    - jbarham 17y ago
      Given your extreme naivety about the nature of the money supply, I highly recommend that you take an introductory course on macro-economics. And where is it written that the "working class" aren't allowed to buy foreign currencies? Given that I'll be flying out of the US tomorrow on holiday I was hoping I'd be able to buy some foreign currencies at the airport...
    - zargon 17y ago
      The definition of fiat currency is the currency that a government mandates for payment of taxes and which courts require you to accept as payment of debts. What country are you thinking of where gold is used by fiat?
    - nostrademons 17y ago
      Money is not wealth. Things that people want is wealth. If your company paid you $1, it's presumably because you gave them something that they want more than $1, most likely your labor.
    - trominos 17y ago
      > If my company paid me, they are poorer by $1. Yes. But presumably when you earned that dollar you somehow contributed to making something that somebody wants. Now that thing is slightly more common, so it should be slightly easier to obtain than it was. Thus you've given a tiny little bit of value to everybody who participates in the same economy that you do. When millions of people do this we get modern civilization.
  - crc32 17y ago
    In the real world, the rich don't always get rich by "creating wealth". Taxation can be a counterbalance to inefficiencies in imperfect markets, and an expression of the morals and ethics of the majority.
  - gaius 17y ago
    The BBC reported recently that the top 30% of UK taxpayers (about 15% of the population) are net contributors, everyone else gets more out of the system than they put in. Weirdly the answer is always "make those who contribute the most contribute more" and not "make some of the rest pull their weight".
- jmillikin 17y ago
  After all, when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money The current numbers for the US are actually something like: 10% of the population controls 85% of the wealth. 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth. Which, if anything, strengthens your point.
  - jbarham 17y ago
    Source please. And define "control". Investment bankers might "control" my retirement fund but they certainly don't own it. The difference is rather important.
  - cwan 17y ago
    In the US: "In 2000, the top 25 percent of all taxpaying filers paid a whopping 83.6 percent of all income taxes. By 2005, they paid 85.6 percent of all taxes. So in spite of tax rate cuts for the well-off, the share of taxes paid by the well-off has risen." http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/sburns/stories/DN-burns_04bus.ART.State.Edition1.4603045.html http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/s... - The irony is that tax cuts for the rich under the Bush Administration made taxation more progressive as it grew the overall tax base. More here: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/10/top-1-pay-more-.html http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/10/top-1-pay-mo... "The new data shows that the top-earning 25% of taxpayers (AGI over $62,068) earned 67.5% of the nation's income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86%). The top 1% of taxpayers (AGI over $364,657) earned approximately 21.2% of the nation's income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 39.4% of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1% of tax returns paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95% of tax returns."
  - teuobk 17y ago
    Nice charts showing this data (albeit a few years out of date): http://perotcharts.com/category/taxation-charts/page/7/ http://perotcharts.com/category/taxation-charts/page/7/
- BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
  "If they're not, the system is unfairly biased to keeping the rich rich." Is your solution to move the rich from being rich to being poor? The rich should stay rich. You don't punish the rich to bring the rest of society up.
  - msg 17y ago
    Then do you punish the rest of society to bring the rich up? You can go around in circles here. My opinion is that no matter what you call the oligarchy of corporate wealth and public influence that runs the United States, you can't call it fair. The playing field is tilted toward those with power to tilt the playing field. People are profiting from the unfairness in the playing field. So the moral thing to do is to tilt it back. You don't have to nationalize Nabisco or send millionaires to debtor's prison to improve the situation. But you can tax them disproportionately compared to the poor, and use the money on social programs. Put another way, above the line of FU money, the marginal value of the millionaire's last dollar is lower. It takes more of their dollars to make a proportionate impact on their income, compared to the impact of the payroll, property, and income taxes on the middle-class salary.
    - BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
      Please explain where the rest of society is being punished. I hope your answer does not include anything similar to "they have to pay for things." As for social programs, if you give a man enough money to live for a day, he's not going to work for a day. Welfare encourages people to do absolutely nothing.
      - msg 17y ago
        Read the GGP, it refers to punishing the rich to help society. I was pointing out that if you see taxation as a zero sum game of winners and losers, then of course someone will always be crying that they are being punished. The rich and their multi-national corporations, evading taxes and lobbying for sweetheart deals from the government, are doing a lot of damage to the American lower class and middle class. I don't have to look far to rip examples from the headlines. The health and drug systems are messed up. The corporate welfare for Wall Street is messed up. Education is messed up. In all cases the poor are disadvantaged to the benefit of the wealthy. They are literally paying taxes for the excesses of powerful corporations and lobbies. Maybe I used the wrong term, but I consider education a social program. We spend far too little on it. We were hemming and hawing about funding HeadStart not too long ago. We underpay our teachers and then lower our taxes and call it a balanced budget. There are social programs that are important beyond welfare, so just ignore that one if it is distracting you from the main point.
- pchristensen 17y ago
  I think you have the right idea but the wrong phrasing. If the top 20% are earning 80% of the wealth, they're getting 80% of the benefit of the country's system of laws, infrastructure, resources, etc and should pay accordingly. That doesn't mean they should pay 80% though - in a world where people and capital can move, the price you can charge people and businesses to be in your country is subject to market pressure. And assuming proper pricing, markets are the best way to efficiently allocate scare resources.
  - jonallanharper 17y ago
    The top 20% aren't benefitting from everyone else's system, they are benefiting by the lack of rules and control from others (essentially freedom) and their own ingenuity. In other words, the top 20% aren't benefiting at the sacrifice of any one else... they are creating new wealth. And, it's frankly none anyone else's concern, in general, how much wealth they choose to create for themselves. Consider if you would, yourself living on your own remote property. Suppose you have an excellent system of agriculture and infrastructure that you engineered yourself... which is immensely productive. Now suppose another individual migrates to that location and you then create rules b/w you and said person to respect each other's property. All the sudden, are you benefiting from your new society's system of rules and his agreement not to harm to you? No; you are benefitting from you own ingenuity and labor, as you were before he arrived. You are profiting from your own freedom and the use of your own mind, as you did before.
    - crc32 17y ago
      This is a rather strange analogy. Suppose that once this new individual arrives, the rules that I agree with him are "you pay me x percent of your income, and you may use my agriculture and infrastructure". In this context you can call it rent. However extend that to an entire country with a ruling class, and you may rename it taxation. When democracy emerges and the ruling class becomes the people, then we are back where we started. While I disagree any implication that the sole basis of taxation should be an assessment of "how much have you used"; I agree that this should be a part of it. If Google benefits from publicly funded UK/Irish IT infrastructure, then it is fair to tax them for the benefit recieved.
- anamax 17y ago
  > The rich should be taxed. After all, when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money, they should be paying 80% of any nation's taxes too. If they're not, the system is unfairly biased to keeping the rich rich. Actually, the US federal income tax rate is far more "progressive" than that. If you're at/below median income, you're probably not paying any federal income tax. (You are paying social security, but you get that money back with a decent return. The rich don't.)
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    I wholly disagree with 'progressive' taxing. Taxing should be like voting, everyone gets the same whether they want it or not. Problems arising from taxation shouldn't be solved by complicating the taxation process, they should be resolved after taxation. If you take 10% of everyone's wages then the top 20% will be paying 80% of the nations income tax. Distribution to people below the poverty line can be implemented (as in most countries it is) after taxation. I get one vote, I should be getting one tax, just like everyone else.
    - daemin 17y ago
      While I like the concept of this, the problem comes in when the richest people don't actually get a wage, or they get paid far less than their actual income. The rest of their wealth and income comes from dividends and owning companies, which are not taxed the same way. IIRC there was an article from Warren Buffet in which he ponders why he pays less tax than his secretary, even though he earns far more than her.
      - anamax 17y ago
        > The rest of their wealth and income comes from dividends and owning companies, which are not taxed the same way. That doesn't imply that they aren't taxed. (In the US, dividends come out of a company's post-tax profits, so they've already been taxed. Plus, there's an off-again/on-again tax on dividends paid by the recipients.) > IIRC there was an article from Warren Buffet in which he ponders why he pays less tax than his secretary, even though he earns far more than her. Buffet doesn't "pay less tax than his secretary". He pays taxes at a lower rate on some of his income than she pays on her wages. Buffet is fond of advocating taxes on other people, using himself as an example even though he'll never pay the tax in question. For example, he pushes the estate tax, never mentioning that his estate is set up so it won't pay a dime. He just happens to own companies that make a lot of money off of people who will owe estate taxes. Even if that weren't true, using Buffet as an example is a bad idea. He has the money to get around almost every tax law. Laws supposedly aimed at him end up hitting other people. It's also dishonest - politicians talk about going after the "super rich", but they end up passing laws that hit folks a couple of rungs down. This is understandable, there's more total money a couple of rungs down and those folks don't have the political pull to do anything about it, but .... Note that the super-rich get to decide where they'll be taxed. Buffet can take his income elsewhere. If he does, his US secretary loses her job.

electromagnetic 17y ago

The rich should be taxed. After all, when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money, they should be paying 80% of any nation's taxes too. If they're not, the system is unfairly biased to keeping the rich rich. If you can pay $1 million in income tax in a single year, I figure you're doing fucking amazing out of life and it's where any entrepreneur should want to be in life.

chwolfe 17y ago
"when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money" Who exactly are the rich "taking" money from in general? Creating wealth is not a zero-sum game. If you insert the word "earning" in the above phrase, the argument you present loses some luster.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  If I "earn" a dollar, where did that dollar come from? If my company paid me, they are poorer by $1. If the government paid me, the aggregate citizenry is poorer by $1. If the government printed it, the total value of US dollars in circulation has decreased by $1. Technically, activities like mining precious metals or gems could count as creating wealth, but obviously basing an economy on an arbitrarily-priced material as silver or gold is a bad idea. Anybody who believes gold isn't a fiat currency is mad. The most successful way that governments seem to have found to tax the wealthy is inflation, which is a "tax" on liquid currency. But there's ways for the wealthy to avoid inflation which aren't available to the working class, such as buying various foreign currencies. A direct tax, rather than "stealth" taxes, is a healthier and more sustainable choice.
  - ewanmcteagle 17y ago
    I'm sorry but this is terribly thoughtless. When you are given something the giver may be impoverished (ignoring any pleasure they get from giving) but when you provide a service or sell something both sides are happy. One receives the money they want more than the good/service and the other receives the good/service they want more than the money. Both are enriched. Without understanding this miracle you cannot understand many things about the world. This is why we don't still live in caves and spend all our time gathering food. Gold is not wealth. It is only because it can be exchanged for a good or service that can be consumed that it has any value.
  - jbarham 17y ago
    Given your extreme naivety about the nature of the money supply, I highly recommend that you take an introductory course on macro-economics. And where is it written that the "working class" aren't allowed to buy foreign currencies? Given that I'll be flying out of the US tomorrow on holiday I was hoping I'd be able to buy some foreign currencies at the airport...
  - zargon 17y ago
    The definition of fiat currency is the currency that a government mandates for payment of taxes and which courts require you to accept as payment of debts. What country are you thinking of where gold is used by fiat?
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    Money is not wealth. Things that people want is wealth. If your company paid you $1, it's presumably because you gave them something that they want more than $1, most likely your labor.
  - trominos 17y ago
    > If my company paid me, they are poorer by $1. Yes. But presumably when you earned that dollar you somehow contributed to making something that somebody wants. Now that thing is slightly more common, so it should be slightly easier to obtain than it was. Thus you've given a tiny little bit of value to everybody who participates in the same economy that you do. When millions of people do this we get modern civilization.
- crc32 17y ago
  In the real world, the rich don't always get rich by "creating wealth". Taxation can be a counterbalance to inefficiencies in imperfect markets, and an expression of the morals and ethics of the majority.
- gaius 17y ago
  The BBC reported recently that the top 30% of UK taxpayers (about 15% of the population) are net contributors, everyone else gets more out of the system than they put in. Weirdly the answer is always "make those who contribute the most contribute more" and not "make some of the rest pull their weight".
jmillikin 17y ago
After all, when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money The current numbers for the US are actually something like: 10% of the population controls 85% of the wealth. 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth. Which, if anything, strengthens your point.
- jbarham 17y ago
  Source please. And define "control". Investment bankers might "control" my retirement fund but they certainly don't own it. The difference is rather important.
- cwan 17y ago
  In the US: "In 2000, the top 25 percent of all taxpaying filers paid a whopping 83.6 percent of all income taxes. By 2005, they paid 85.6 percent of all taxes. So in spite of tax rate cuts for the well-off, the share of taxes paid by the well-off has risen." http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/sburns/stories/DN-burns_04bus.ART.State.Edition1.4603045.html http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/s... - The irony is that tax cuts for the rich under the Bush Administration made taxation more progressive as it grew the overall tax base. More here: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/10/top-1-pay-more-.html http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/10/top-1-pay-mo... "The new data shows that the top-earning 25% of taxpayers (AGI over $62,068) earned 67.5% of the nation's income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86%). The top 1% of taxpayers (AGI over $364,657) earned approximately 21.2% of the nation's income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 39.4% of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1% of tax returns paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95% of tax returns."
- teuobk 17y ago
  Nice charts showing this data (albeit a few years out of date): http://perotcharts.com/category/taxation-charts/page/7/ http://perotcharts.com/category/taxation-charts/page/7/
BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
"If they're not, the system is unfairly biased to keeping the rich rich." Is your solution to move the rich from being rich to being poor? The rich should stay rich. You don't punish the rich to bring the rest of society up.
- msg 17y ago
  Then do you punish the rest of society to bring the rich up? You can go around in circles here. My opinion is that no matter what you call the oligarchy of corporate wealth and public influence that runs the United States, you can't call it fair. The playing field is tilted toward those with power to tilt the playing field. People are profiting from the unfairness in the playing field. So the moral thing to do is to tilt it back. You don't have to nationalize Nabisco or send millionaires to debtor's prison to improve the situation. But you can tax them disproportionately compared to the poor, and use the money on social programs. Put another way, above the line of FU money, the marginal value of the millionaire's last dollar is lower. It takes more of their dollars to make a proportionate impact on their income, compared to the impact of the payroll, property, and income taxes on the middle-class salary.
  - BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
    Please explain where the rest of society is being punished. I hope your answer does not include anything similar to "they have to pay for things." As for social programs, if you give a man enough money to live for a day, he's not going to work for a day. Welfare encourages people to do absolutely nothing.
    - msg 17y ago
      Read the GGP, it refers to punishing the rich to help society. I was pointing out that if you see taxation as a zero sum game of winners and losers, then of course someone will always be crying that they are being punished. The rich and their multi-national corporations, evading taxes and lobbying for sweetheart deals from the government, are doing a lot of damage to the American lower class and middle class. I don't have to look far to rip examples from the headlines. The health and drug systems are messed up. The corporate welfare for Wall Street is messed up. Education is messed up. In all cases the poor are disadvantaged to the benefit of the wealthy. They are literally paying taxes for the excesses of powerful corporations and lobbies. Maybe I used the wrong term, but I consider education a social program. We spend far too little on it. We were hemming and hawing about funding HeadStart not too long ago. We underpay our teachers and then lower our taxes and call it a balanced budget. There are social programs that are important beyond welfare, so just ignore that one if it is distracting you from the main point.
pchristensen 17y ago
I think you have the right idea but the wrong phrasing. If the top 20% are earning 80% of the wealth, they're getting 80% of the benefit of the country's system of laws, infrastructure, resources, etc and should pay accordingly. That doesn't mean they should pay 80% though - in a world where people and capital can move, the price you can charge people and businesses to be in your country is subject to market pressure. And assuming proper pricing, markets are the best way to efficiently allocate scare resources.
- jonallanharper 17y ago
  The top 20% aren't benefitting from everyone else's system, they are benefiting by the lack of rules and control from others (essentially freedom) and their own ingenuity. In other words, the top 20% aren't benefiting at the sacrifice of any one else... they are creating new wealth. And, it's frankly none anyone else's concern, in general, how much wealth they choose to create for themselves. Consider if you would, yourself living on your own remote property. Suppose you have an excellent system of agriculture and infrastructure that you engineered yourself... which is immensely productive. Now suppose another individual migrates to that location and you then create rules b/w you and said person to respect each other's property. All the sudden, are you benefiting from your new society's system of rules and his agreement not to harm to you? No; you are benefitting from you own ingenuity and labor, as you were before he arrived. You are profiting from your own freedom and the use of your own mind, as you did before.
  - crc32 17y ago
    This is a rather strange analogy. Suppose that once this new individual arrives, the rules that I agree with him are "you pay me x percent of your income, and you may use my agriculture and infrastructure". In this context you can call it rent. However extend that to an entire country with a ruling class, and you may rename it taxation. When democracy emerges and the ruling class becomes the people, then we are back where we started. While I disagree any implication that the sole basis of taxation should be an assessment of "how much have you used"; I agree that this should be a part of it. If Google benefits from publicly funded UK/Irish IT infrastructure, then it is fair to tax them for the benefit recieved.
anamax 17y ago
> The rich should be taxed. After all, when the top 20% are taking over 80% of the money, they should be paying 80% of any nation's taxes too. If they're not, the system is unfairly biased to keeping the rich rich. Actually, the US federal income tax rate is far more "progressive" than that. If you're at/below median income, you're probably not paying any federal income tax. (You are paying social security, but you get that money back with a decent return. The rich don't.)
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  I wholly disagree with 'progressive' taxing. Taxing should be like voting, everyone gets the same whether they want it or not. Problems arising from taxation shouldn't be solved by complicating the taxation process, they should be resolved after taxation. If you take 10% of everyone's wages then the top 20% will be paying 80% of the nations income tax. Distribution to people below the poverty line can be implemented (as in most countries it is) after taxation. I get one vote, I should be getting one tax, just like everyone else.
  - daemin 17y ago
    While I like the concept of this, the problem comes in when the richest people don't actually get a wage, or they get paid far less than their actual income. The rest of their wealth and income comes from dividends and owning companies, which are not taxed the same way. IIRC there was an article from Warren Buffet in which he ponders why he pays less tax than his secretary, even though he earns far more than her.
    - anamax 17y ago
      > The rest of their wealth and income comes from dividends and owning companies, which are not taxed the same way. That doesn't imply that they aren't taxed. (In the US, dividends come out of a company's post-tax profits, so they've already been taxed. Plus, there's an off-again/on-again tax on dividends paid by the recipients.) > IIRC there was an article from Warren Buffet in which he ponders why he pays less tax than his secretary, even though he earns far more than her. Buffet doesn't "pay less tax than his secretary". He pays taxes at a lower rate on some of his income than she pays on her wages. Buffet is fond of advocating taxes on other people, using himself as an example even though he'll never pay the tax in question. For example, he pushes the estate tax, never mentioning that his estate is set up so it won't pay a dime. He just happens to own companies that make a lot of money off of people who will owe estate taxes. Even if that weren't true, using Buffet as an example is a bad idea. He has the money to get around almost every tax law. Laws supposedly aimed at him end up hitting other people. It's also dishonest - politicians talk about going after the "super rich", but they end up passing laws that hit folks a couple of rungs down. This is understandable, there's more total money a couple of rungs down and those folks don't have the political pull to do anything about it, but .... Note that the super-rich get to decide where they'll be taxed. Buffet can take his income elsewhere. If he does, his US secretary loses her job.