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"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 sta

"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.
    - daemin 17y ago
      If the rich get taxed more, effectively being taxed out of being rich, what incentive is there to become rich? Would it not be better in that case to do what you like and let the government pay you for doing absolutely sweet FA?
      - msg 17y ago
        I think you think I want to destroy the upper class. I don't. I just think that FU money should be taxed more heavily than regular money. When Warren Buffett's janitor pays a higher effective tax rate than he does, something is wrong. But that doesn't mean it's right to pauperize Warren Buffett. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/06/warren-buffet-p.html http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/06/warren-buffe... I am in pretty good company with this argument I think. We should have a more progressive tax system. There is a lot of room to make it more progressive without damaging incentives to become rich. There are so many incentives to become rich that it's laughable to say that you could destroy them all through a carefully calculated welfare program.
- anamax 17y ago
  > 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. Ignoring the bit about "fair", that's true, but you don't understand what it means, especially as it relates to "fair". > So the moral thing to do is to tilt it back. If it was possible to tilt it back, it wouldn't be tilted. (Reread the first paragraph quoted.) If you insist on giving govt power, that power will favor those who are the best equipped at tilting govt power to their benefit. You can't keep them from tilting things in their direction - you can only affect whether there's anything to tilt in their direction. If you're satisfied with crumbs, keep shoveling power at govt, but stop complaining that others are getting a full meal. If you want to stop them from getting a full meal, you've got to get govt out of the food biz. Yes, you'll lose your crumbs, so you get to make a choice.
btilly 17y ago
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. Here is a fun bit of trivia. Q: What was the top personal income tax during the largest expansion of the US middle class on record? A: It ranged from 92-93%. That's right. During the post-war boom of the 1950s, the marginal tax rate on income over $1 million/year (in 1950s currency) varied from 92-93%. Oh, and massive increases since the 70s in the numbers of wealthy people, and degree of their wealth have coincided with a long-term decline in the earning power of the middle class. Of course cause and effect is never provable in cases like this so you can't prove anything from this example, but it certainly doesn't fit with trickle down theory. But since there is more money to be made telling the rich what they want to hear than what they don't, inconvenient facts like these never get reported in the political debate...
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Did anybody actually pay that rate? Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that the rich had more tax loopholes, which they exploited more aggressively. e.g. if you drilled for oil, you got a 'depletion' allowing of 22.5% of the value of the oil you sold, since you were getting one asset (oil in barrels) and losing another (oil in the ground). Drill for enough oil, at a low enough profit margin, and your tax bill drops to zero. You've heard of three-martini lunches, right? You know that they existed because the cheapest way to drink was to make it a business expense (paid for with pretax dollars) instead of a personal expense (after-tax dollars). At a 92% tax rate, it's 11X as expensive to drink personally as to drink professionally--so the tax policy you laud had the wondrous result of making a decent fraction of American executives half-drunk by noon.
  - btilly 17y ago
    Truth be told, not many. From my readings the most popular tax dodge among the truly rich was the flying nun exemption - donate more than your total income to charity and you owed no taxes. How could this be a win over high taxes? Simple. You would donate an asset that had appreciated for the full value of the asset, which was less than the purchase price. As long as you had a supply of rapidly appreciating assets, your effective tax rate was much lower. The most popular kind of asset to donate for this purpose was art. The most popular place to donate it was to foundations run by the rich families in question. And appreciation was easy to guarantee when everyone else was following the same strategy. So the idea is buy 5 Monets for $1 million. A couple of years later donate a million to the family run foundation, the foundation uses that million and buys one Monet from you. You then donate 4 more Monets at the new found valuation of $1 million each. For $2 million in expenses you have now canceled out $5 million in income. The most lasting legacies of this tax loophole are insanely high art prices and public museums full of extremely expensive art.

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.
  - daemin 17y ago
    If the rich get taxed more, effectively being taxed out of being rich, what incentive is there to become rich? Would it not be better in that case to do what you like and let the government pay you for doing absolutely sweet FA?
    - msg 17y ago
      I think you think I want to destroy the upper class. I don't. I just think that FU money should be taxed more heavily than regular money. When Warren Buffett's janitor pays a higher effective tax rate than he does, something is wrong. But that doesn't mean it's right to pauperize Warren Buffett. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/06/warren-buffet-p.html http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/06/warren-buffe... I am in pretty good company with this argument I think. We should have a more progressive tax system. There is a lot of room to make it more progressive without damaging incentives to become rich. There are so many incentives to become rich that it's laughable to say that you could destroy them all through a carefully calculated welfare program.
anamax 17y ago
> 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. Ignoring the bit about "fair", that's true, but you don't understand what it means, especially as it relates to "fair". > So the moral thing to do is to tilt it back. If it was possible to tilt it back, it wouldn't be tilted. (Reread the first paragraph quoted.) If you insist on giving govt power, that power will favor those who are the best equipped at tilting govt power to their benefit. You can't keep them from tilting things in their direction - you can only affect whether there's anything to tilt in their direction. If you're satisfied with crumbs, keep shoveling power at govt, but stop complaining that others are getting a full meal. If you want to stop them from getting a full meal, you've got to get govt out of the food biz. Yes, you'll lose your crumbs, so you get to make a choice.

btilly 17y ago

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. Here is a fun bit of trivia. Q: What was the top personal income tax during the largest expansion of the US middle class on record? A: It ranged from 92-93%. That's right. During the post-war boom of the 1950s, the marginal tax rate on income over $1 million/year (in 1950s currency) varied from 92-93%. Oh, and massive increases since the 70s in the numbers of wealthy people, and degree of their wealth have coincided with a long-term decline in the earning power of the middle class. Of course cause and effect is never provable in cases like this so you can't prove anything from this example, but it certainly doesn't fit with trickle down theory. But since there is more money to be made telling the rich what they want to hear than what they don't, inconvenient facts like these never get reported in the political debate...

byrneseyeview 17y ago
Did anybody actually pay that rate? Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that the rich had more tax loopholes, which they exploited more aggressively. e.g. if you drilled for oil, you got a 'depletion' allowing of 22.5% of the value of the oil you sold, since you were getting one asset (oil in barrels) and losing another (oil in the ground). Drill for enough oil, at a low enough profit margin, and your tax bill drops to zero. You've heard of three-martini lunches, right? You know that they existed because the cheapest way to drink was to make it a business expense (paid for with pretax dollars) instead of a personal expense (after-tax dollars). At a 92% tax rate, it's 11X as expensive to drink personally as to drink professionally--so the tax policy you laud had the wondrous result of making a decent fraction of American executives half-drunk by noon.
- btilly 17y ago
  Truth be told, not many. From my readings the most popular tax dodge among the truly rich was the flying nun exemption - donate more than your total income to charity and you owed no taxes. How could this be a win over high taxes? Simple. You would donate an asset that had appreciated for the full value of the asset, which was less than the purchase price. As long as you had a supply of rapidly appreciating assets, your effective tax rate was much lower. The most popular kind of asset to donate for this purpose was art. The most popular place to donate it was to foundations run by the rich families in question. And appreciation was easy to guarantee when everyone else was following the same strategy. So the idea is buy 5 Monets for $1 million. A couple of years later donate a million to the family run foundation, the foundation uses that million and buys one Monet from you. You then donate 4 more Monets at the new found valuation of $1 million each. For $2 million in expenses you have now canceled out $5 million in income. The most lasting legacies of this tax loophole are insanely high art prices and public museums full of extremely expensive art.