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> At this point, there is no way of having a reduction in tax bills that doesn't overwhelming favor the top 50% of earners This is completely true. The reason
by eropple 9y ago
> At this point, there is no way of having a reduction in tax bills that doesn't overwhelming favor the top 50% of earners
This is completely true.
The reason the top half pay all the taxes is the top half have all the goddamned money. And that, of course, makes sense: the top half have the only realistic chance at accumulating enough labor-derived money to buy into capital and they've been doing exactly that for the last fifty years. Capital is not linear per-hour. Capital is a multiplier. That's why they have all the money. That they have all the money is the core and the source of the mess we're dealing with right now.
Which means there is another question to be asked: should taxes be lowered? As someone very firmly in that top half, I am benefited by having people in the lower half of the income distribution not starving and dying in the streets, not dying of easily preventable injuries and illnesses, and not being so crushed by debt that revolution looks appealing.
So are you. It's not about you, and it's not about me, but it's about us. We need to do better by us, so we can all keep this thing ticking along.
And I gotta say, it's important not to miss that even that Bloomberg article elides a really, really important question: how much of that net $915 from that hypothetical renter now goes to (poorly) covering for the cuts in other services that will be necessitated to avoid budgetary disaster? It's a hard question, because nobody really knows, but it's a question whose answer will impact the people at the bottom of the income distribution the most, by far.
- phyller 9y ago> how much of that net $915 from that hypothetical renter now goes to (poorly) covering for the cuts in other services that will be necessitated to avoid budgetary disaster? It's a hard question, because nobody really knows, but it's a question whose answer will impact the people at the bottom of the income distribution the most, by far. Yes, I think that is the main point, and what we should be talking about. I feel like as a country we have lost the ability to have a discussion at that level of depth. So instead we dumb down our arguments to the point where we mislead people just so they will accept our point of view.
- eropple 9y agoI agree with that. I would also note that there is a real and a mendacious reason for why we have lost that ability.
- perl4ever 9y agoIt could be that people with capital have all the money because capital gains rates are significantly lower than earned income rates. Maybe we could adjust that so as not to continue distorting the economy?
- eropple 9y agoI am not an economist (minor in undergrad, but whatever), but intuitively this sounds like a fair action to take. I'm exactly in the class of Americans who will be capital owners (and I have a leg up, I work in tech, we're the only people who turn labor into capital with such a miniscule overhead), I'm pretty okay with paying my way.
- perl4ever 9y agoI wonder if equalizing rates would harm the software industry though - maybe the entire information economy as we know it is largely a product of the discrimination against labor leading to overinvestment in the industry with the highest returns per person. I can also see equalizing rates crashing the prices of investment assets. If it's worth doing in the first place (because the distortion is large) then it is necessarily going to be disruptive. For all we know, not favoring capital only delays the singularity...
- eropple 9y agoI am really very comfortable with the notion of "delaying" a theoretical but probably wrong event in favor of helping real people who exist now.
- undersuit 9y ago>> At this point, there is no way of having a reduction in tax bills that doesn't overwhelming favor the top 50% of earners >This is completely true. I think there are plenty of ways to go about restructuring taxes that make this false. Any jiggering you do with the lower brackets for lowering their rate can be equally compensated by the top brackets starting a few thousand dollars earlier.
- eropple 9y agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding you, but the poor don't pay much (income) taxes on the first place--cutting them to get to those sorts of numbers may be a negative income tax rate. As I understand it, the problem is pretty dumb to have: the imbalance is such that, without significant improvements and expansions of governmental services, there's no money to extract. We have a hand-to-mouth debt peasantry in this country. It's stark once you start digging into the numbers.