6 ms·

What Could Raising Taxes on the 1% Do? Surprising Amounts

53 points by szx 11y ago

littletimmy 11y ago
No idea why we're still not doing this. Just tell the 1% that if they want the government to provide them security from the marauding masses (we're getting there), they need to pay up their fair share.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  Because campaign contributions and principal agent problem between citizens and their representatives.
- hga 11y ago
  Because US economic history shows this is a very bad idea? Unless, of course, you think more government spending is better than more private economic activity. As an extreme on what this sort of thing can lead to, see the 1937 capital strike (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike). At the other end, see the economic growth from JFK's and Reagan's tax rate cuts. As for fair share, 1/3 is not enough? Its not like they're getting proportionate protection from the "marauding masses" for the money they're paying; in fact, the powers that be seem to have no problems with SEIU etc. direct action against their homes. Self-help is where that's at, which might have something to do with the unprecedented US civilian purchases of guns and ammo, continuing to this day (and with Hillary! now calling for mass confiscations...).
  - Hannan 11y ago
    >>As for fair share, 1/3 is not enough? 1/3 would probably be enough, but they're paying ~1/5.
    - philh 11y ago
      littletimmy said the 1%, and this article says they're paying 1/3.
    - briandh 11y ago
      From the article: "The top 1 percent on average already pay roughly a third of their incomes to the federal government, according to a Treasury Department analysis that takes into account the entire menu of taxes — including income tax, payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security, estate and gift taxes, excise and custom duties as well as investors’ share of corporate taxes."
      - hga 11y ago
        And I found that fraction credible since it's been generally true after the 1986 tax reform (the following Clinton and Bush II tax changes didn't do all that much, especially compared to the Reagan changes).
      - Hannan 11y ago
        That's my mistake, I was assuming just federal income tax, thanks for the correction.
- striking 11y ago
  Because then the 1% moves all of its money to a tax haven and invests it somewhere where the margins are thicker.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    It's not like the US can't legislate against that. Just need a couple of more pen strokes to stop that from being a possibility.
1971genocide 11y ago
Because its america - there is a chance it might work. But the reality is capital flees whenever a country tries to impose higher taxes. The solution is a global taxing regime - something that Thomas Picketty advocated. Taxes fundamentally is an business expense - and likes all business expenses companies will try to reduce it as much as they can - naturally due to the freedom of the market - companies that do not have to pay higher taxes will produce cheaper goods while maintaining quality and destroying their competition. Its a prisoner's dilemma problem. With countries playing off each other to welcome businesses in their countries - the UK, US, etc. The solution is for all countries to co-operate and create a global system to keep a close eye on the flow of capital. A change in america might actually lead to it, since america is good at bullying other countries to get its way. Btw the same thing happened with China - its not that the Chinese are somehow inherently more capable - its just that they did not have the same level of obligation to their workers - health, pension, etc - as industrialized nations. This is why its important to create a even and common playing field before talking about the "magic of the free market".
benwerd 11y ago
This needs to happen. Not only do removing tuition fees or enacting universal healthcare remove systemic inequalities, they actually make everyone wealthier. We will have a stronger economy if we take care of the social infrastructure we need. These measures lead to growth. Imagine a world where a startup entrepreneur doesn't have to be terrified of their health insurance status - it's the same one where a working class family isn't bankrupted by illness. Imagine a more highly educated workforce with more potential hires domestically - it's the same one where a high school graduate can afford to be the first person in their family to get an education. The things that help the poorest in society help all of us. Even if you don't care about what happens to poorer members of your community, you can rest easy in the knowledge that these things benefit you. Social infrastructure works. The only detrimental effect this would have is that the very richest people don't get to keep quite as much money, on the face of it. But they would make more money overall. I would like to see a fairer America, where more people have opportunities, and fewer people are living harsh poverty conditions. It's exciting to see these topics finally get the air time they deserve.
- thadd 11y ago
  You want to see a "fairer America" fueled by a discriminatory taxation policy. I hope this irony does not escape you. If your goal is truly to see fewer people living in harsh poverty conditions, an absolutely noble goal, let the free market be. Capitalism will (and has, see the extreme poverty figures) bring far more people out of poverty than any bureaucrat could ever hope to.
  - benwerd 11y ago
    That's a very libertarian point of view. Has it been shown to work in practice over an extended time? I know that in the US growth was stronger with higher taxation. I don't believe progressive taxation is discriminatory. The more you earn, the more the marginal utility of each additional dollar you earn is reduced. Progressive taxation recognizes this, and therefore eases survival burdens on lower income workers - who are necessary for any capitalist economy to function - while continuing to allow higher earners to become wealthy. It's a good system.
danteembermage 11y ago
I think a reasonable metaphor for thinking about this issue is to consider a grocery store, where is aisle represents a different kind of income and each store represents a different country. If prices get too high in one aisle, shoppers that spend a lot of time in that aisle will switch stores if they can afford the drive. It seems like both people and politicians tend to focus on the "earned income" aisle because that's what people are familiar with. That serves as a nice area for politicking because they can "tax the wealthy" without actually hitting the real donors in any meaningful way since most of their income comes from other sources. At the same time corporations and high net worth individuals are more than capable of leaving, hence the double-irish, etc. If they go, tax revenues go to 0 rather than small, so it would seem to be in the strategic interest of the United States government (assuming we want to maximize revenue which is probably not the goal but will work for this purpose) to be the lowest tax domicile for that kind of income, but just barely. That way we attract wealthy individuals but still "extract" the maximum feasible wealth from them. I really don't like the adversarial nature of this kind of thinking, but you have to at least admit that people are corporations do venue shop. If that's not brought up at all, someone's being naiive, or more likely, disingenuous.
supster 11y ago
One reason why the 1% pay less taxes is b/c they make their money on investments rather than income. The yearly capital gains tax (tax on investment gains) is ~15% while income tax in that bracket is 30-40%. Those in the 99% pay somewhere between 10-28% income tax. So it would seem obvious that we should simply raise capital gains tax to 30-40%. However, investments and income are not equivalent. Making an investment is correlated with a certain amount of risk. For example an investment in a General Motors corporate bond has a risk of default (very apparent in 2008). So if we raise taxes on investment gains, we dis-incetivize investment activity (b/c it therefore lowers expected gains). So it makes places like GM less able to finance things like payroll or build factories that employ regular people. I'm not saying we should or should not raise taxes on 1%'ers. But we should keep in mind that there is no free lunch. What we do has unintended consequences that we should keep in mind.
- lmm 11y ago
  Taking a job on a salary also involves a risk, as plenty of GM workers found out recently. Money is supposed to be fungible, and the free market is supposed to allocate capital optimally. In any other case where we taxed one kind of thing at 30% and another at 15%, people would be crying foul about this crazy taxation regime that was distorting the market.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  It is not true that raising taxes on investment gains disincentives investment. If you start taxing investments more, it's not like the rich will suddenly stop investing. You should hear Warren Buffet talk about this. No rich person is going to go like "Well... I could make money on this, but not going to do it because the state is going to tax it..." This is something that happens only in abstract economic models, not in the real world. In fact, if you raise taxes rich people may be incentivized to work harder to find better investments with higher gains.
  - hga 11y ago
    No rich person is going to go like "Well... I could make money on this, but not going to do it because the state is going to tax it..." Utter bullshit, which has been reflected in actual US investment history since the Capital Strike of 1937. The perception of fairness goes both ways, you know. Not to mention reflected in my father's (and others') economic behavior as the Reagan tax rate cuts took effect, and they put much less effort into sheltering income from very high tax rates (generally, something with a net vector sum of zero) and focused more on just, you know, running good businesses. Then there's the minor detail that a tax increase can turn a profitable investment into a loss. The constant chaos of changing tax rates, or at least serious proposals to do so, also changes the nature of investments, for example favoring quick gains before the government might ruin it.
whatok 11y ago
It's beyond naive to expect American politicians to do anything remotely responsible with increased tax revenue. There are countless examples throughout recent and age-old history that show what happens when you give government money to spend like drunken sailors but we don't ever seem to learn from any of them. And if Hillary Clinton was serious about any of this, she would return donations from all of these people.
thadd 11y ago
Not entirely related, but progressive taxation schemes make me extremely uncomfortable. It's a shame so many people want to continue even farther down the rabbit hole.
- Maarten88 11y ago
  Why? I think progressive taxes are the price you pay for living in a civilized society. I see paying a high taxes as a privilege since I still get to keep much more then less fortunate, less talented, or lazier people. I say this as someone who is living in Europe, where I'm paying almost 50% of my income to taxes.
  - thadd 11y ago
    It's discriminatory. It doesn't treat people fairly under the law. But it also really bothers me that it's just so arbitrary. I can't imagine the arrogance necessary to think that you know how much to tax a certain segment of society relative to another.
    - dllthomas 11y ago
      "It's discriminatory. It doesn't treat people fairly under the law." "Fairly" is begging the question. "Discriminatory" isn't necessarily a bad thing, and needs to be further refined if it's going to be meaningful. Progressive taxation (in isolation) does not discriminate between people. It discriminates between dollars. My first dollar is taxed the same as your first dollar; my ten thousandth dollar is taxed the same as your ten thousandth dollar; my millionth dollar is taxed the same as your millionth dollar. It is true that my millionth dollar is taxed differently from my first dollar, and that is discrimination between dollars, but generally people don't hold "equal treatment of dollars" as a moral principle. "I can't imagine the arrogance necessary to think that you know how much to tax a certain segment of society relative to another." Roughly the same arrogance necessary to think you know how much to tax in the first place, or really any other decision making on that level.
      - 11y ago
ap22213 11y ago
There seems to be quite a bit of FUD and a lot of apparent guessing in these comments. Regardless of politics, are there any studies or evidence to back up or even discount any of these claims? How does one separate the politics from the rest?
xienze 11y ago
> That would more than cover, for example, the estimated $47 billion cost of eliminating undergraduate tuition at all the country’s four-year public colleges and universities, as Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed I would be in favor of this proposal if it could be demonstrated that college costs could actually stay somewhat stable (i.e. not increase faster than inflation) for even a relatively short period of time. Otherwise the cost of this could spiral out of control in short order.
mindcrime 11y ago
No, just no. Taxation (of individuals at least ) is theft. If one person puts a gun in your face, or threatens to, and demands your money, you would have no problem seeing it so. But because of the societal construct we call "government" some people are deluded into believing that "many men with guns" have some innate authority that "one man with a gun" lacks. But being robbed by many men is no less robbery than being robbed by an individual. Now, if you want to talk about corporate taxes, that's a somewhat different story. Corporations owe their existence to the State (whether they should exist or not is a separate question) and since they derive benefits from the special status granted to them by the State, I can see a reasoned argument that they should pay for that special status. Of course there are potential, negative, unintended consequences to raising corporate taxes, but the concept is more palatable than the individual income tax (which needs to be completely eliminated).
- benwerd 11y ago
  I don't think it's robbery unless you don't participate in the state. If you're using roads, education, the police, fire departments and all of the other infrastructure and innate protections you get from the state, then, yes, you should contribute. If you really are an island with no interaction with the outside world, fair enough. But then you have other problems.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    I don't think it's robbery unless you don't participate in the state. That's irrelevant. It's robbery because your agency, your ability to choose is being taken from you. As a thought experiment, ask yourself this: What if you were on your way to a local orphanage to give your last $100 to the orphanage, and halfway there, a robber with a gun steps from an alleyway, puts a gun in your face, and demands your money... then, after he gives it to you, he proceeds to the same orphanage and hands the money to them. Would you still say you were robbed? The same end was achieved, so you really weren't, right? But yet, almost everybody will intuitively find something wrong about this scenario. That "wrongness" is the issue.
    - 11y ago
another-one-off 11y ago
The idea of a 'fair share' isn't so important here, because the numbers are huge and have to come from somewhere. It isn't like $100 billion sits under a mattress, it will already be out in the economy, invested in something. Raising tax is one part of the people getting what they need. The other questions that are just as important are how to provide services as cost effectively as possible and is it worth the loss of investment in the economy. Also maybe is existing investment channeled effectively by the existing tax structures.
philh 11y ago
Epistemic status: wildly overconfident. "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!" This is naive on two counts. You can't raise taxes without affecting people's behaviour. If someone's tax burden goes from 35% to 45%, they'll put more effort into avoiding taxes, and you're not going to see the increase that the obvious calculation says you will. But let's ignore that for now. The highest number here is $276 billion. That's a bit less than 10% of the $3 trillion tax receipts collected in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Major_receipt_categories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#M... That's a significant amount, but it's not really earth shattering unless you can use it effectively. And if you can use it effectively, you probably could have used the previous $3t effectively as well. In reality, when you collect an extra $X billion, you don't get to go "oh great, we can spend $Y billion of that on paying for college tuition, $Z billion on a child tax credit, and the rest can reduce the national debt". What actually happens is the same thing that happened to the rest of your money. It goes to the military, it goes to subsidies for entrenched interests, it goes to pork barrels, and a fraction of it goes to actually improving things. What could an extra $276 billion do? Surprisingly little.
- muzmath 11y ago
  I can say quite confidently that the same people who are proposing such tax increases also support cutting the military budget. (Almost) never in government is there a single action that can be done to make demonstrable difference.
- nugget 11y ago
  This is exactly the problem. I would be happy paying an extra 10% in taxes if the money was spent efficiently. But so much of it is wasted (and ends up back in the hands of ''the 1%'' ironically). After what I've seen I trust wealthy individuals to invest that extra 10% into efforts that benefit society much more than I trust the government. I think we'd be better off if we lowered income taxes, raised property taxes, and raised the death tax in % terms (and eliminated the perpetual trust loophole). But instead there will be a circus show as politicians argue over the Federal rate (already effectively at 43.4% for ''the rich'').

53 points by szx 11y ago

No idea why we're still not doing this. Just tell the 1% that if they want the government to provide them security from the marauding masses (we're getting there), they need to pay up their fair share.

hkmurakami 11y ago
Because campaign contributions and principal agent problem between citizens and their representatives.
hga 11y ago
Because US economic history shows this is a very bad idea? Unless, of course, you think more government spending is better than more private economic activity. As an extreme on what this sort of thing can lead to, see the 1937 capital strike (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike). At the other end, see the economic growth from JFK's and Reagan's tax rate cuts. As for fair share, 1/3 is not enough? Its not like they're getting proportionate protection from the "marauding masses" for the money they're paying; in fact, the powers that be seem to have no problems with SEIU etc. direct action against their homes. Self-help is where that's at, which might have something to do with the unprecedented US civilian purchases of guns and ammo, continuing to this day (and with Hillary! now calling for mass confiscations...).
- Hannan 11y ago
  >>As for fair share, 1/3 is not enough? 1/3 would probably be enough, but they're paying ~1/5.
  - philh 11y ago
    littletimmy said the 1%, and this article says they're paying 1/3.
  - briandh 11y ago
    From the article: "The top 1 percent on average already pay roughly a third of their incomes to the federal government, according to a Treasury Department analysis that takes into account the entire menu of taxes — including income tax, payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security, estate and gift taxes, excise and custom duties as well as investors’ share of corporate taxes."
    - hga 11y ago
      And I found that fraction credible since it's been generally true after the 1986 tax reform (the following Clinton and Bush II tax changes didn't do all that much, especially compared to the Reagan changes).
    - Hannan 11y ago
      That's my mistake, I was assuming just federal income tax, thanks for the correction.
striking 11y ago
Because then the 1% moves all of its money to a tax haven and invests it somewhere where the margins are thicker.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  It's not like the US can't legislate against that. Just need a couple of more pen strokes to stop that from being a possibility.

1971genocide 11y ago

Because its america - there is a chance it might work. But the reality is capital flees whenever a country tries to impose higher taxes. The solution is a global taxing regime - something that Thomas Picketty advocated. Taxes fundamentally is an business expense - and likes all business expenses companies will try to reduce it as much as they can - naturally due to the freedom of the market - companies that do not have to pay higher taxes will produce cheaper goods while maintaining quality and destroying their competition. Its a prisoner's dilemma problem. With countries playing off each other to welcome businesses in their countries - the UK, US, etc. The solution is for all countries to co-operate and create a global system to keep a close eye on the flow of capital. A change in america might actually lead to it, since america is good at bullying other countries to get its way. Btw the same thing happened with China - its not that the Chinese are somehow inherently more capable - its just that they did not have the same level of obligation to their workers - health, pension, etc - as industrialized nations. This is why its important to create a even and common playing field before talking about the "magic of the free market".

benwerd 11y ago

This needs to happen. Not only do removing tuition fees or enacting universal healthcare remove systemic inequalities, they actually make everyone wealthier. We will have a stronger economy if we take care of the social infrastructure we need. These measures lead to growth. Imagine a world where a startup entrepreneur doesn't have to be terrified of their health insurance status - it's the same one where a working class family isn't bankrupted by illness. Imagine a more highly educated workforce with more potential hires domestically - it's the same one where a high school graduate can afford to be the first person in their family to get an education. The things that help the poorest in society help all of us. Even if you don't care about what happens to poorer members of your community, you can rest easy in the knowledge that these things benefit you. Social infrastructure works. The only detrimental effect this would have is that the very richest people don't get to keep quite as much money, on the face of it. But they would make more money overall. I would like to see a fairer America, where more people have opportunities, and fewer people are living harsh poverty conditions. It's exciting to see these topics finally get the air time they deserve.

thadd 11y ago
You want to see a "fairer America" fueled by a discriminatory taxation policy. I hope this irony does not escape you. If your goal is truly to see fewer people living in harsh poverty conditions, an absolutely noble goal, let the free market be. Capitalism will (and has, see the extreme poverty figures) bring far more people out of poverty than any bureaucrat could ever hope to.
- benwerd 11y ago
  That's a very libertarian point of view. Has it been shown to work in practice over an extended time? I know that in the US growth was stronger with higher taxation. I don't believe progressive taxation is discriminatory. The more you earn, the more the marginal utility of each additional dollar you earn is reduced. Progressive taxation recognizes this, and therefore eases survival burdens on lower income workers - who are necessary for any capitalist economy to function - while continuing to allow higher earners to become wealthy. It's a good system.

danteembermage 11y ago

I think a reasonable metaphor for thinking about this issue is to consider a grocery store, where is aisle represents a different kind of income and each store represents a different country. If prices get too high in one aisle, shoppers that spend a lot of time in that aisle will switch stores if they can afford the drive. It seems like both people and politicians tend to focus on the "earned income" aisle because that's what people are familiar with. That serves as a nice area for politicking because they can "tax the wealthy" without actually hitting the real donors in any meaningful way since most of their income comes from other sources. At the same time corporations and high net worth individuals are more than capable of leaving, hence the double-irish, etc. If they go, tax revenues go to 0 rather than small, so it would seem to be in the strategic interest of the United States government (assuming we want to maximize revenue which is probably not the goal but will work for this purpose) to be the lowest tax domicile for that kind of income, but just barely. That way we attract wealthy individuals but still "extract" the maximum feasible wealth from them. I really don't like the adversarial nature of this kind of thinking, but you have to at least admit that people are corporations do venue shop. If that's not brought up at all, someone's being naiive, or more likely, disingenuous.

supster 11y ago

One reason why the 1% pay less taxes is b/c they make their money on investments rather than income. The yearly capital gains tax (tax on investment gains) is ~15% while income tax in that bracket is 30-40%. Those in the 99% pay somewhere between 10-28% income tax. So it would seem obvious that we should simply raise capital gains tax to 30-40%. However, investments and income are not equivalent. Making an investment is correlated with a certain amount of risk. For example an investment in a General Motors corporate bond has a risk of default (very apparent in 2008). So if we raise taxes on investment gains, we dis-incetivize investment activity (b/c it therefore lowers expected gains). So it makes places like GM less able to finance things like payroll or build factories that employ regular people. I'm not saying we should or should not raise taxes on 1%'ers. But we should keep in mind that there is no free lunch. What we do has unintended consequences that we should keep in mind.

lmm 11y ago
Taking a job on a salary also involves a risk, as plenty of GM workers found out recently. Money is supposed to be fungible, and the free market is supposed to allocate capital optimally. In any other case where we taxed one kind of thing at 30% and another at 15%, people would be crying foul about this crazy taxation regime that was distorting the market.
littletimmy 11y ago
It is not true that raising taxes on investment gains disincentives investment. If you start taxing investments more, it's not like the rich will suddenly stop investing. You should hear Warren Buffet talk about this. No rich person is going to go like "Well... I could make money on this, but not going to do it because the state is going to tax it..." This is something that happens only in abstract economic models, not in the real world. In fact, if you raise taxes rich people may be incentivized to work harder to find better investments with higher gains.
- hga 11y ago
  No rich person is going to go like "Well... I could make money on this, but not going to do it because the state is going to tax it..." Utter bullshit, which has been reflected in actual US investment history since the Capital Strike of 1937. The perception of fairness goes both ways, you know. Not to mention reflected in my father's (and others') economic behavior as the Reagan tax rate cuts took effect, and they put much less effort into sheltering income from very high tax rates (generally, something with a net vector sum of zero) and focused more on just, you know, running good businesses. Then there's the minor detail that a tax increase can turn a profitable investment into a loss. The constant chaos of changing tax rates, or at least serious proposals to do so, also changes the nature of investments, for example favoring quick gains before the government might ruin it.

whatok 11y ago

It's beyond naive to expect American politicians to do anything remotely responsible with increased tax revenue. There are countless examples throughout recent and age-old history that show what happens when you give government money to spend like drunken sailors but we don't ever seem to learn from any of them. And if Hillary Clinton was serious about any of this, she would return donations from all of these people.

thadd 11y ago

Not entirely related, but progressive taxation schemes make me extremely uncomfortable. It's a shame so many people want to continue even farther down the rabbit hole.

Maarten88 11y ago
Why? I think progressive taxes are the price you pay for living in a civilized society. I see paying a high taxes as a privilege since I still get to keep much more then less fortunate, less talented, or lazier people. I say this as someone who is living in Europe, where I'm paying almost 50% of my income to taxes.
- thadd 11y ago
  It's discriminatory. It doesn't treat people fairly under the law. But it also really bothers me that it's just so arbitrary. I can't imagine the arrogance necessary to think that you know how much to tax a certain segment of society relative to another.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    "It's discriminatory. It doesn't treat people fairly under the law." "Fairly" is begging the question. "Discriminatory" isn't necessarily a bad thing, and needs to be further refined if it's going to be meaningful. Progressive taxation (in isolation) does not discriminate between people. It discriminates between dollars. My first dollar is taxed the same as your first dollar; my ten thousandth dollar is taxed the same as your ten thousandth dollar; my millionth dollar is taxed the same as your millionth dollar. It is true that my millionth dollar is taxed differently from my first dollar, and that is discrimination between dollars, but generally people don't hold "equal treatment of dollars" as a moral principle. "I can't imagine the arrogance necessary to think that you know how much to tax a certain segment of society relative to another." Roughly the same arrogance necessary to think you know how much to tax in the first place, or really any other decision making on that level.
    - 11y ago

ap22213 11y ago

There seems to be quite a bit of FUD and a lot of apparent guessing in these comments. Regardless of politics, are there any studies or evidence to back up or even discount any of these claims? How does one separate the politics from the rest?

xienze 11y ago

> That would more than cover, for example, the estimated $47 billion cost of eliminating undergraduate tuition at all the country’s four-year public colleges and universities, as Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed I would be in favor of this proposal if it could be demonstrated that college costs could actually stay somewhat stable (i.e. not increase faster than inflation) for even a relatively short period of time. Otherwise the cost of this could spiral out of control in short order.

mindcrime 11y ago

No, just no. Taxation (of individuals at least ) is theft. If one person puts a gun in your face, or threatens to, and demands your money, you would have no problem seeing it so. But because of the societal construct we call "government" some people are deluded into believing that "many men with guns" have some innate authority that "one man with a gun" lacks. But being robbed by many men is no less robbery than being robbed by an individual. Now, if you want to talk about corporate taxes, that's a somewhat different story. Corporations owe their existence to the State (whether they should exist or not is a separate question) and since they derive benefits from the special status granted to them by the State, I can see a reasoned argument that they should pay for that special status. Of course there are potential, negative, unintended consequences to raising corporate taxes, but the concept is more palatable than the individual income tax (which needs to be completely eliminated).

benwerd 11y ago
I don't think it's robbery unless you don't participate in the state. If you're using roads, education, the police, fire departments and all of the other infrastructure and innate protections you get from the state, then, yes, you should contribute. If you really are an island with no interaction with the outside world, fair enough. But then you have other problems.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  I don't think it's robbery unless you don't participate in the state. That's irrelevant. It's robbery because your agency, your ability to choose is being taken from you. As a thought experiment, ask yourself this: What if you were on your way to a local orphanage to give your last $100 to the orphanage, and halfway there, a robber with a gun steps from an alleyway, puts a gun in your face, and demands your money... then, after he gives it to you, he proceeds to the same orphanage and hands the money to them. Would you still say you were robbed? The same end was achieved, so you really weren't, right? But yet, almost everybody will intuitively find something wrong about this scenario. That "wrongness" is the issue.
  - 11y ago

another-one-off 11y ago

The idea of a 'fair share' isn't so important here, because the numbers are huge and have to come from somewhere. It isn't like $100 billion sits under a mattress, it will already be out in the economy, invested in something. Raising tax is one part of the people getting what they need. The other questions that are just as important are how to provide services as cost effectively as possible and is it worth the loss of investment in the economy. Also maybe is existing investment channeled effectively by the existing tax structures.

philh 11y ago

Epistemic status: wildly overconfident. "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!" This is naive on two counts. You can't raise taxes without affecting people's behaviour. If someone's tax burden goes from 35% to 45%, they'll put more effort into avoiding taxes, and you're not going to see the increase that the obvious calculation says you will. But let's ignore that for now. The highest number here is $276 billion. That's a bit less than 10% of the $3 trillion tax receipts collected in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Major_receipt_categories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#M... That's a significant amount, but it's not really earth shattering unless you can use it effectively. And if you can use it effectively, you probably could have used the previous $3t effectively as well. In reality, when you collect an extra $X billion, you don't get to go "oh great, we can spend $Y billion of that on paying for college tuition, $Z billion on a child tax credit, and the rest can reduce the national debt". What actually happens is the same thing that happened to the rest of your money. It goes to the military, it goes to subsidies for entrenched interests, it goes to pork barrels, and a fraction of it goes to actually improving things. What could an extra $276 billion do? Surprisingly little.

muzmath 11y ago
I can say quite confidently that the same people who are proposing such tax increases also support cutting the military budget. (Almost) never in government is there a single action that can be done to make demonstrable difference.
nugget 11y ago
This is exactly the problem. I would be happy paying an extra 10% in taxes if the money was spent efficiently. But so much of it is wasted (and ends up back in the hands of ''the 1%'' ironically). After what I've seen I trust wealthy individuals to invest that extra 10% into efforts that benefit society much more than I trust the government. I think we'd be better off if we lowered income taxes, raised property taxes, and raised the death tax in % terms (and eliminated the perpetual trust loophole). But instead there will be a circus show as politicians argue over the Federal rate (already effectively at 43.4% for ''the rich'').