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Rising income inequality is essentially defined as rich people getting more money. Lowering taxes on the rich gives them more money. That’s a pretty direct mec
by CPLX 8y ago
Rising income inequality is essentially defined as rich people getting more money. Lowering taxes on the rich gives them more money.
That’s a pretty direct mechanism of action, not sure what else you need. However if you’re genuinely seeking answers there’s plenty of data on how regressive policies have led to increased inequality, it’s not a secret.
As for validating the second part I recommend turning on your television.
- WalterBright 8y agoAsserting there is a breakdown of the social order is quite different from asserting what caused the breakdown. There was an awful lot of social strife in the 1960s, for example, which had those high tax rates.
- antidesitter 8y ago> Lowering taxes on the rich gives them more money. > Therefore, lowering taxes on the rich causes “skyrocketing inequality”. Did I get your argument right? Seems to be missing a premise or two.
- lucas_membrane 8y agoHere are two premises: (1) Extraordinary money confers extraordinary power. (2) It is a proper role of government to put reasonable limits on the power of wealth. Sadly, the American government now works on a revised version of (2), i.e.: It is a proper role of wealth to put unreasonable limits on the power of government.
- WalterBright 8y agoThe federal government is more powerful than at any time in history. I'm curious what you consider unreasonable limits imposed by rich people.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoMore powerful than the time during which it allowed people to legally own other human beings? Or when it forcibly relocated people to reservations across the country? Or when it put people into concentration camps because of a war we were fighting at the time?
- nec4b 8y agoImmensely more powerful than at any of those points you have written. Today at a push of a button it can eliminate most of the world as we know it. Remember, it had to fight civil war to prevent people owning other people.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoThe parent is referring to legal power, not military power.
- nec4b 8y agoLegal power without means to enforce it is meaningless, hence the civil war when the government was weaker in the past.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoIt's still an orthogonal question. We can rephrase more specifically: "is the legal purview the federal government over residents of the United States at its greatest extent since the founding of the country?"
- nec4b 8y agoThe answer is unambiguous yes. There has never been more laws, more agencies, more regulation, more government employees and so on.
- jki275 8y agoI would be very interested to hear where premise 2 comes from. I can speak only for America, but that premise does not appear anywhere in our Constitution.
- antidesitter 8y agoNeither of those premises makes the argument valid.
- seibelj 8y agoThe social order is only “broken down” if you only get your news from television. Things can get unbelievably worse.
- saiya-jin 8y agoYou are analyzing one aspect of the system in vacuum, and probably conflating correlation and causation. You, and nobody else don't really know what higher taxation over last 30 years would bring. More tax havens, which are really everywhere these days? Which is an effect I can confirm from my home country (higher tax -> higher avoidance/optimalization -> less taxes to the state). Lower the taxes, and tax office actually collects more cash for a given year. Rich are not dumb, they will not just sit and watch some state eat their wealth and getting nothing tangible back, in contrary. I know I would too, if for nothing else then my future kids and their kids.
- CPLX 8y agoNothing tangible? Maybe we can herd them up and drop them in Somalia so they can get familiar with some of the tangible benefits of a stable society with a well funded and functional government.
- saiya-jin 8y agoI assume you are trolling for fun/boredom and in reality don't have this naive and outright dangerous early soviet-style mindset. Or maybe you do (and don't share basic values of western civilization), and then I would kindly ask you a favor - could you please relocate to North Korea, at least for some time? I struggle to find any other similar paradise on the face of earth these days, they seemed to crumble despite their apparent greatness but this one is still holding a bit and showing off to those evil capitalists how masses cleverly run the show... right. When I meant tangible returns, it is in vein of giving say 4 millions $$ to the state and seeing nothing actually coming back in form of better roads, schools and hospitals or anything else in the area they live. The money just disappears in bottomless bit called state budget, where corrupt officials take a cut or two, then it gets paid either in salaries of state employees (which many view as ineffective bureaucrats) or in messed up overpriced contract work to maintain/improve, of course only to overly friendly companies. It is a bit of a caricature of functional western society but so is some evil uncle Scrooge, reality looks a bit differently. The more we move towards this caricature the more real the culprits on both sides will be, including types you like yourself to pose in.
- pcstl 8y ago“They would have the poor be poorer, provided the rich were less rich!”