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Tax cuts always have a higher impact on the wealthy because, well, they pay more taxes. This isn’t a bad thing. That money won’t dissapear. It’ll get spent or

• tacomonstrous 9y ago
  >Tax cuts are good. Stop saying they’re bad. Taken to the logical limit that would imply that we shouldn't have taxes at all. You're assuming also that taxes are being cut across the board, but it is very unclear if the middle class will experience any positive change, while there is ample evidence that the President and most of his cabinet will make out quite well personally.
  • lucio 9y ago
    If somehow you can have a government w/o having taxes (maybe financed by seigniorage), yes. We shouldn't have taxes at all. Taxes are a necessary evil.
• burkaman 9y ago
  It's obviously possible to, for example, lower the lowest bracket and leave the highest the same. This would be a tax cut with no impact on the wealthy.
  • djrogers 9y ago
    Not true - it would absolutely have an impact on the wealthy, as everyone pays taxes at the lowest rate for all income up to the lowest bracket.
    • s73ver_ 9y ago
      The magnitude of the impact, however, would be much different between the two.
    • redblacktree 9y ago
      This is a pedantic splitting of hairs. It would be an insignificant change to the most wealthy.
• tmnvix 9y ago
  > Tax cuts are good. Stop saying they’re bad. Except that tax cuts basically mean the government has less money to pay for things. I suppose if you don't rely on government for anything (like infrastructure to run your business) then that's good. Otherwise it is bad.
  • tooltalk 9y ago
    well, most of the federal spending goes to maintaining our welfare and warfare state. Contrary to common myth, infrastructure cost is a tiny fraction of the federal budget.
  • brightball 9y ago
    I've always been more concerned with how effectively it's spent.
    • okreallywtf 9y ago
      If you are concerned that your engine doesn't run efficiently, simply cutting the fuel to it doesn't actually fix any problems. The government is a huge entity that does some very important things and wastes a lot of money (some of which being pork that it seems every party indulges in), simply assuming that cutting off the cash flow is going to improve anything is wishful thinking I think. You know certain things will be funded (like the military) but a lot of basic services to the needy always seem to be on the chopping block despite costing a fraction of the budget (food stamps, nutritional assistance to pregnant mothers, etc).
      • djrogers 9y ago
        > If you are concerned that your engine doesn't run efficiently, simply cutting the fuel to it doesn't actually fix any problems. Since you're using a ridiculous analogy here, one can easily point to CAFE standards that have dramatically increased the efficiency of cars over the past 20 years by doing exactly what you're describing - cutting the fuel...
        • 9y ago
• trendia 9y ago
  We should probably stop calling them "loopholes", too. The two biggest policies that reduce a wealthy person's taxes are: 1) capital gains is lower than income 2) there are deductions for almost everything 3) tax-free retirement accounts 4) charitable deductions The truth is that many of the above affect the middle class, too.
  • basseq 9y ago
    They absolutely help the middle class, too. The issue with being middle class is that you don't qualify for the "social safety net" deductions, but the other loopholes don't net you much in the way of absolute dollars—particularly given the investment (documentation) required. Plus: 1) Middle class typically doesn't have the ability to structure income as capital gains. 2) (See above.) 3) Given modest contribution caps in retirement accounts, not a major "loophole" for the wealthy. 4) Something we should encourage at all levels.
  • eli 9y ago
    Don't tax free retirement accounts already phase out based on income and cap annual contributions?
  • WalterBright 9y ago
    2. Itemized deductions get phased out once income exceeds a certain threshold, plus you get subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax. 3. There are limits to how much can be put in them. 4. Sure, you get a tax deduction for donations to charity. But you NO LONGER HAVE THE MONEY. You gave it away. Giving money away is giving away the wealth.
• vorotato 9y ago
  The wealthy don't need to find loopholes, they are constructed by our lawmakers. An uneven playing field is damaging to the free market. This is a bad thing. That money won't disappear. It'll get spent or invested (either directly or indirectly by a bank if saved) Tax cuts are bad. Stop saying they're good. The wealthy have money to affect political decisions because they can afford lobbyists, so it's the not-so-wealthy who have a marginalized impact.
  • vorotato 9y ago
    Seriously your argument is that the wealthy spend money? You know who spends money even better? The government, the government literally spends all the money. By your argument we should be giving as much money to the government as possible as they will spend, or invest it.
    • r00fus 9y ago
      No the wealthy don't spend money - that's the problem. They take the money and move it offshore or into a tax shelter and it gets invested and sits. Compare to someone who's poor - they spend most of their take-home pay on daily needs that spur the economy. Cutting taxes for the rich only gives them more money - trickle-down theory has been proven to not work, and in fact the biggest net return for governments is to simply hand out cash (qualified as welfare/food stamps or unqualified like universal income) - that gets the government like 1.7x the amount handed out in tax receipts inbound as the cash passes through the economy.
• munk-a 9y ago
  The issue is that it won't necessarily get spent, saving rate goes up with income which produces less currency circulation. The whole idea of trickle down economics just needs to go away.
  • padobson 9y ago
    If there's going to be government intervention in the economy (and there's going to be government intervention in the economy) then supply side economics works great in environments where there isn't enough investment. That said, we don't live in one of those environments. We've probably had too much investment for the last 104 years or so...
  • WillPostForFood 9y ago
    What do you think happens to the money that gets saved? People aren't stuffing it into a mattress. It still circulates.
    • munk-a 9y ago
      It circulates but it doesn't circulate locally and it doesn't circulate quickly. The earnings of people with lower incomes tends to get reinvested directly into their local community. Higher income earners will pass their money off to a bank which may reinvest it into a local business but is as likely to invest it overseas.
      • WillPostForFood 9y ago
        Even if that's true, does it matter? Whether a dollar saved is spent locally, or saved in the bank and loaned locally, or saved in the bank and loaned to some other community, or wire transferred to family in Mexico ,or invested in a factory in Indonesia, some local community benefits.
• Chiba-City 9y ago
  All this fatalism is wrong, nonsense propaganda. The "wealthy" in plain fact are often killed with survivors exiled en masse. I know tons of bitter Maryland and DC former wealthy who were punished for collusion with our very own state and exiled to our little patch of North American pizza cheese hell to remember. I know world bankers who work with now assassinated Russian billionaires. You obviously have no comparative data, relevant associates or historical acumen whatsoever. Dare to say something exceedingly smart, discerning and not wish fulfilling. Noise obscures any possible policy signal. All "old saw" claims of "what everyone knows" only subtract from value creation, good planning and sound accounting. That will remain true tomorrow and 10 years from now. Stay away from needy or greedy cheerleaders spewing nonsense. Just wait and some dummy will a wave a flag next.
• UweSchmidt 9y ago
  >That money won’t dissapear. It’ll get spent or invested (either directly or indirectly by a bank if saved). Only in economics 101 would the bank need deposits for loans. In the real world there is no upper limit on money that wants to be invested, just a lack of feasible investment opportunities. More fundamentally, governments want to stimulate the economy at all costs, so interest rates are near zero ("please take our money and create jobs") and plenty of attempts at subsidizing industries have been (and are still) made. Since you can't quite force economic growth, startups etc., at least you can have money in circulation. So, money in the bank, like money under the mattress, is bad for the economy. So, the tax cut may infact be bad from an economic perspective.
• mikestew 9y ago
  It’ll get spent or invested (either directly or indirectly by a bank if saved). Ah, the ol' "trickle down economics" trope that refuses to die. I've been waiting since the Reagan administration to see it actually work as advertised. Tax cuts are good. Stop saying they’re bad. If only saying it made it true. The current proposal doesn't look to benefit me, a household making well into six figures. Guess we'll have to work harder to make the >$400K needed to benefit from the latest "reform" proposal. That, or start funneling all of our income through an LLC. Meanwhile, at the bottom end, the taxes go up from 10% to 12%. Tax cuts are good if you're incredibly rich (and not just mildly rich like me). For the vast majority of us, it won't benefit us at all.
• s73ver_ 9y ago
  "Tax cuts always have a higher impact on the wealthy because, well, they pay more taxes." They also get the most income and wealth. "This isn’t a bad thing. That money won’t dissapear. It’ll get spent or invested (either directly or indirectly by a bank if saved)." Maybe. But that also doesn't mean it'll be used for something good for society, rather than Uber for Dogs. "Tax cuts are good." Tax cuts are a thing. By themselves, they are neither good nor bad. How they're applied is the difference. If a tax cut causes government revenues to drop to the point where they can no longer properly fund public schools, it's not the wealthy that are going to be hurt by it.