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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 af
by 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 agoI 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 agoThis 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'').
- redblacktree 11y agoI was with you up until this part: > I trust wealthy individuals to invest that extra 10% into efforts that benefit society much more than I trust the government. Those wealthy individuals can, in general, be trusted to do things that benefit themselves. Corruption be as it may, the government is still in the business of the greater good, however imperfect.