4 ms·

Love the framing in this article. Letting someone keep an extra portion of their own income, but only if used for savings or healthcare, is referred to as "tax

Love the framing in this article. Letting someone keep an extra portion of their own income, but only if used for savings or healthcare, is referred to as "tax expenditure". This person - again we're only talking about them being allowed to keep a slightly larger fraction of his/her own income - is a "welfare queen". Audacious!

ThomPete 11y ago
Your premise is that it's their income to begin with which is based on the assumption that the entire value of whatever they get is 100% based on their own work. Thats not how salaries works. There are a lot of factors involved in a salary not just your own work. For instance the protection of your property rights, the borders, against criminals and so on. We can discuss how much we should pay in taxes, but this false premise that your income is a one to one reflection of your work is simply false.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Certhas 11y ago
That is not the framing of the article, it's a key argument made in the second answer: "Budget experts and many policymakers (including Republicans such as [House Speaker] Paul Ryan) consider targeted tax breaks as being similar to actual government spending." Unfortunately this is not expanded upon, but its eminently reasonable. If you don't like this way of talking about it, the argument becomes that they make the tax system more regressive than it appears to be. So by claiming that there is some "framing" going on instead of engaging with the actual argument that is _explixitly stated_ you're only preventing discussion and analysis on the systemic origins of inequality.
caseysoftware 11y ago
If you start from the assumption that everything (and by extension, everyone) is owned by the government, then this reasoning makes sense. The only reason you have anything is because the government has allowed you to have it. Of course, the flip side is that if it is all owned by the government, they can choose to take it away at any time because it's not like you earned it. Which is an unfortunate line of reasoning when combined with Basic Income Guarantees..

ThomPete 11y ago

Your premise is that it's their income to begin with which is based on the assumption that the entire value of whatever they get is 100% based on their own work. Thats not how salaries works. There are a lot of factors involved in a salary not just your own work. For instance the protection of your property rights, the borders, against criminals and so on. We can discuss how much we should pay in taxes, but this false premise that your income is a one to one reflection of your work is simply false.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Certhas 11y ago

That is not the framing of the article, it's a key argument made in the second answer: "Budget experts and many policymakers (including Republicans such as [House Speaker] Paul Ryan) consider targeted tax breaks as being similar to actual government spending." Unfortunately this is not expanded upon, but its eminently reasonable. If you don't like this way of talking about it, the argument becomes that they make the tax system more regressive than it appears to be. So by claiming that there is some "framing" going on instead of engaging with the actual argument that is _explixitly stated_ you're only preventing discussion and analysis on the systemic origins of inequality.

caseysoftware 11y ago

If you start from the assumption that everything (and by extension, everyone) is owned by the government, then this reasoning makes sense. The only reason you have anything is because the government has allowed you to have it. Of course, the flip side is that if it is all owned by the government, they can choose to take it away at any time because it's not like you earned it. Which is an unfortunate line of reasoning when combined with Basic Income Guarantees..