7 ms·

How to Tax Our Way Back to Justice

27 points by tysone 7y ago

devoply 7y ago
One interesting rule might be to keep people with a certain amount of money from meddling in politics. Like you track all the money, and rich people are not allowed to influence politics at all. That would destroy the strangle hold that various groups with a lot of money have on American or hell global politics. Trump should not be allowed to be President. There should be an inverse relationship between money and power. The more money you have, the less power you have to do anything political with that money. Maybe like we make a new category of money that can only do certain things and is heavily regulated and watched. And that's the sort of money that you can have way up there in the clouds, you can't have regular people money which is the money we have right now. That then would move the discussion from how much they have, to what they can do with it.
- michaelmarion 7y ago
  This would never pass muster in the context of freedom of speech. Instead, we should just remove money from politics entirely: campaigns should be publicly financed at a fixed amount each cycle, and term limits should be set on all elected offices. Politics should not be a career. I want a Congress that's comprised of representatives from a variety of trades and occupations: farmers, doctors, engineers, construction workers, and so on. Representing your district or state in government should be a seen as a public service of finite length — almost akin to a tour of duty in the military.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    > publicly financed The trouble with that is who gets the government financing? It could easily be corrupted into an incumbent re-election fund.
    - michaelmarion 7y ago
      All candidates get an equal amount — including incumbents — and no outside or personal funds are eligible for use towards a campaign. The incumbent advantage would be negated in some part by term limits.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        How is a "candidate" determined?
        michaelmarion 7y ago
        Ahh, I see your point. Good question.
    - zbyte64 7y ago
      The same way we determine who gets on the ballot. Next question.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        Who gets on the ballot is determined by laws designed to protect the two party system. Even so, getting on the ballot requires campaigning, which requires money. For example, there is no ballot for 2020 yet, but there's a heluva lot of campaign money being spent right now.
        theandrewbailey 7y ago
        There's also that nasty Electoral College thing that makes the presidential election effectively 50 sub-elections. That requires each candidate to register in each state to get on their ballot. No doubt, there's fees for that.
  - repsilat 7y ago
    > remove money from politics entirely I used to think that the best (and only real effective) way to get money out of politics was to get the power out of politics. If the government can't subsidise companies/sectors, protectionism shrinks. Wherever there's opportunity for influence to be bought, I thought, money would find a way. Recently there was an article on here that had a different opinion -- that there's really surprisingly little money in US politics. Worth a read: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012637
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    Term limits should also be placed on Justices. Say 10 years with a rolling limit i.e. a sitting president can only 'place' 2 justices, any other justices would need to be chosen by the house (which is more fairly distributed by #s). The senate would have to ratify/approve still but unanimous house vote chooses the supreme court. This would ensure no party controls the justice system. It might even be beneficial if they just 'alternate' maybe the president gets first pick, then the house, then the president. I think the house/justice system could also be increased quite a bit. I don't know the numbers but I'm pretty sure the # of house members is in-line w/ population of the early 1900s and is due a major overhaul, I think I heard the house could easily be tripled in size allowing a more diverse/population-centric voice. We could potentially double the house and justices, perhaps even having two supreme courts running simulatenously if there are enough cases for that, and each court could have a 'leader' who becomes tie breaker for the other court when needed. But major change is almost inevitably never going to happen in America, especially in our current climate. Maybe after 2020 when the power shifts which I'm hopefully it will shift somewhat more progressive, but then again all shit could break loose again, there's still a good year for things to hit the fan. Widening the 'voice' of America is something that will probably net benefit democrats of Republicans, as GOP is really good at controlling districting and making themselves seem a bigger 'bloc' then they really are. Though, I think that is shifting a lot of states for instance are instituting non-partisan redistricting committees to handle district changes and updates without the involvement of elected officials. Even here in Utah they voted for this to happen, so that's a good thing. Getting money out of politics though is desperately needed. I totally agree that campaigns should have a fixed amount. If they do allow donations they should only allow up to 1000 per individual and $0 from organizations. Corporations are NOT individuals NOR are they citizens. PACs should ONLY be able to push for/against propositions and issues NOT elected officials. All candidate videos should ONLY be sanctioned/pushed by the candidate not by pacs and super pacs.
- 09bjb 7y ago
  Reversing the 2010 Citizens United decision would be a good start. Campaign finance reform (the flavor espoused by Bernie Sanders, perhaps) would be another great step. Unfortunately the recent history in this realm is one of dismantling the apparatuses that kept the exchange rate of money to political influence high. Crony, corrupt, corporate-subsidy capitalism rules, and politics is its servant.
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    I like what represent.us is doing pushing for 'anti-corruption acts' across America. If you watch their progress it really is having an effect on democracy. Enacting something like that in congress would be a HUGE win for America.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  Or, perhaps, publicly fund campaigns and eliminate money as a representation of free speech. Hand out X tokens to every voter each year which represent contributions and let them distribute as they wish.
  - transreal 7y ago
    This is part of Andrew Yang's platform. He calls it Democracy Dollars: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    I much prefer to have private money buying politicians than public money. The latter makes the politicians conspire together against the public: after all, they all win the longer, more expensive and flamboyant campaigns are. Anecodtally Argentina has public funding, and the biggest two parties ended up keeping all the public money for campaigning, and small parties have no chance. Do you think the Libertarian or Green party or Mormon parties iwll get the same money as the Dems and Reps?
    - gremlinsinc 7y ago
      This is why the public funding being in hands of American's makes good sense. I like Yang's proposal give all American's $500 in political cash, let them choose who to give it to. If they choose nobody then it goes back into the fund for the next election. This would also encourage politicians to actually reach out and 'touch' people enough that they give a shit to donate their political cash to that person. It might make more people get out and vote and participate in the election process. When more people vote democracy benefits.
      - conanbatt 7y ago
        I understand the concept, but still wary. First, this means people have a proxy to sell their vote (il give you my 500 dollar boucher for 100 cash), second it spends more money in campaigns than naturally. There are central premises of democracy at stake here. If monetizing political power is good then we ahouls build a way to sell votes directly.
- theandrewbailey 7y ago
  You're proposing that an entire class's human rights be restricted? That's not cool.
  - devoply 7y ago
    So say the human rights of a few thousand as opposed to the human rights of a few million maybe billions. Seems like a just bargain.
    - jki275 7y ago
      And you are exactly why we have a Constitution.
      - devoply 7y ago
        Yes and religious fanatics have their religious books, what's your point. There are fortunately amendments that can be made to the Constitution.
        jki275 7y ago
        I'm a fanatic about freedom, if that's your point I supposed you're correct. Of course there's a process for amendment. The process was made very difficult for a reason though.
  - true_religion 7y ago
    Is it really that? Being rich is neither a human right nor a protected class. Anyone can go from rich to merely upper class easily. All the rich have to do is give away their money. To be clear, I don’t support this but I am trying to understand why you make it sound like a human right violation.
refurb 7y ago
An important thing to note about the Saez effective tax rate analysis is that it ignores transfer payments back to low income individuals. Other important assumptions have a big impact on calculated rates. Suffice to say the analysis that Saez did with Piketty, shows that the top income earners have a much higher tax rate (40% vs. 30%). This is a pretty good analysis of the issues.[1] Saez and Zucman (2019) argue that the U.S. has a relatively proportional tax system across all income levels. However, federal taxes are progressive, as shown by Piketty and Saez (2007), Auten and Splinter (2019), The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the U.S. Treasury, and the Congressional Budget Office. [1]http://www.davidsplinter.com/Splinter-TaxesAreProgressive.pdf http://www.davidsplinter.com/Splinter-TaxesAreProgressive.pd...
xhkkffbf 7y ago
I hate to be a jerk about this, but the headline bugs me. When I first heard the phrase "social justice", I assumed it meant that the people who did the work reaped the rewards. Sort of like the Little Red Hen. But here, "justice" seems to mean the opposite. No matter how the poker game works out, the dealer redistributes the winnings to everyone including those who made foolish bets. For what it's worth, I think that capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate because people are putting their own wealth on the line. Someone who buys a stock with $100 could lose the entire $100. Yet if that person gets a dividend of, say, $3 in return for the investment, the authors want this $3 to be treated like ordinary income. But people in regular jobs don't put any capital at risk. The worst that can happen is that the boss cheats them and they don't get paid. In other words, they don't get the $3. They don't put any of their savings at risk.
- random023987 7y ago
  Life isn't a poker game. You can't take the same rules from Vegas and apply them to health care and human rights.
  - qmmmur 7y ago
    Not only that, but the parent is disregarding the human capital put on the line. Time spent educating and specialising is the equivalent of a bet at times.
  - cabaalis 7y ago
    It is, though. Your employer or your clients are risking their money for future gain. To make more money than they put into it, to be "richer."
- qntty 7y ago
  If they don't get paid, they have lost the entire value of their labor. Why is this worth less than money? If anything it should be worth more. There are only so many hours in the day.
  - 7y ago
helpPeople 7y ago
Can't we use history to figure out what's going happen next? The executive branch turns into a dictatorship (by definition, not slander, and definitely no change to the Constitution or Congress) Taxes will be too high on the masses, revolt happens, rich politicians fracture the country. Isn't this what always happens?
- Qwertystop 7y ago
  You're saying "taxes will be too high on the masses" but this proposal would reduce taxes on everyone below the 95th percentile (or perhaps 90th?) in income. If almost everyone gets less taxes, how will that make them too high for the masses? You can disagree on whether it'd be practical, or whether the knock-on effects would be good, or whether the philosophy behind the decision is something you agree with, or any number of other things, but... I don't see how you can see a proposal that explicitly lowers taxes in almost every bracket, and say most people are going to complain about their taxes going up.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
The calculation would be even more lopsided if health insurance was considered a tax. That's the sort of thing you have to do if you want compare American taxes against taxes in other first world countries.
dstroot 7y ago
Tax is money we contribute to a collective fund and then we elect representatives to spend it for the common good. With me so far? The people who contribute the most should have a proportional say in how it’s spent. This is “fairness”. Numerically there will be more people who contribute less and fewer people who contribute more under a regressive system. All of us share the benefits of social programs and health care even if we are not directly benefiting. Society works, and people can regain health, etc. and start contributing to the overall pool of tax money again. At no point should tax become a method to redistribute wealth - although that’s exactly what it’s become. We can all agree that some people earn so little they don’t have to pay into the “common benefit fund” (tax) but then shouldn’t they lose the right to decide how the funds are spent?
- mhuffman 7y ago
  If we take your thought experiment to the extreme, it could look like this: The wealth divide continues widening. After generations, and the "snowball effect", Jeff Bezos' great-grandchildren end up paying all the taxes because everyone else in the country makes so little (only enough to survive) that they don't have to pay in. At this point, a single-family has a say on how the money will be spent. And you may accept this scenario, but now that same family literally controls the movement of all food and people (through our road systems), our country's national defense, and most importantly, the ability of any of the rest of the poor people in the country to ever not be poor forever after. So, using proportional representation (as you appear to advocate) and the idea that even modest returns on very, very large amounts of money will eventually overtake the rest of the economy, we have moved from a democracy to a monarchy or oligarchy. I don't want my hard-earned saving to be taken away, so I am sympathetic, but there is still the real-world problem that if money isn't forcibly redistributed at a rate that eats into the "magic" of compound interest, it is only a matter of time before there is a problem. And if it must be redistributed, I rather it is redistributed to the government for the good of all, rather than just handed out evenly among everyone.
  - zbyte64 7y ago
    You can show how X system is not sustainable but if the parent claims X system is the only "fair" system then the argument falls of deaf ears.
refurb 7y ago
I raised this in the previous discussion, but the fact the "top 400 earners" is a specific subgroup is really suspicious. Typically you'd pick a nice round number. The top 100, the top 500, the top 1000. But they picked the top 400. Why? My guess is they ran their analysis and realized their conclusion isn't supported unless they used the top 400. Notice the tax rate is nice and progressive for everyone else except that one subgroup.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  The number 400 was chosen 38 years ago by Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#78c81de07e2f https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#78c81de07e2f
  - refurb 7y ago
    But that's net worth, not income. And this isn't a magazine article, it's supposed to be a academic analysis. Do they reference Forbes in the paper?
- burkaman 7y ago
  I can't figure out why, but it seems to have been a standard for a long time: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-top-400-individual-income-tax-returns-with-the-largest-adjusted-gross-incomes https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-top-400-individ...
cmurf 7y ago
I do think taxes on the wealthy are too low. But I also think it's politically unlikely for the tax rate to get to fairness, and I also think there's simply not enough money to go around. For sure other countries with more fair tax systems do have qualitatively less wealth inequality and my bias is I consider that a social good. But I think we're getting the diagnosis wrong. Everyone in the economic system is agreeing to participate in such a way that emphasizes elite labor. And it is that elitism in labor that causes people lower down on the ladder to see far lower wage increases. e.g. a doctor today makes 8x the salary of a nurse, whereas 30 years ago a doctor made 4x the salary of a nurse. OK so which "free market" is getting that differential wrong? Today's or the one 30 years ago? There is a cultural perception that, oh I have to see a doctor for this problem, when a nurse would suffice - this demand of needing only experience. And what you get are wealthy people seeing docs for b.s. issues because they can afford it, but it's totally unnecessary, and reduces the capacity for the doctor for things they should see. Anyway, it's not a meritocracy, it's not a free market, we have capitalism failure and govenment failure and all we really have innovated over the past fifty years is - well not much. Not even the insults in the adversarial bickering about how to solve it have improved. More unpopular than taxes, I suspect, would be adding noise (or randomness if you prefer) to elite education entry requirements. That way it's not just about wealthy parents lowering ladders in the form of money and access to elite schools for their very average children. More people need more opportunity to get ahead. We're not going to get to equal wealth, there isn't enough of it, and we probably would all agree we would like the looks of such an engineered society anyway.
anoplus 7y ago
After reading some articles and thoughts about this topic, I found this old quote in one of them which sums up what I feel: We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis D. Brandeis This was quoted in early 20th century, but I think it gets even more relevant with technological progress, as the rich have first access to tools which further perpetuates their superiority over lower classes. One important tool is to dominate major media channels, and distract the public discussion away from things like corruption, transparency and democracy.
megaman821 7y ago
I agree with taxing the rich more, perhaps by adding a few more tax brackets. The fact that these numbers do not include the EITC (earned income tax credit) is crazy. That would push the bottom quintile to near-zero or even a negative tax rate. This is fitting the data to a narrative, and comes off as dishonest.
Erudite_Genius 7y ago
Ignorant title. Same as saying "How to genocide our way back to peace.".

27 points by tysone 7y ago

One interesting rule might be to keep people with a certain amount of money from meddling in politics. Like you track all the money, and rich people are not allowed to influence politics at all. That would destroy the strangle hold that various groups with a lot of money have on American or hell global politics. Trump should not be allowed to be President. There should be an inverse relationship between money and power. The more money you have, the less power you have to do anything political with that money. Maybe like we make a new category of money that can only do certain things and is heavily regulated and watched. And that's the sort of money that you can have way up there in the clouds, you can't have regular people money which is the money we have right now. That then would move the discussion from how much they have, to what they can do with it.

michaelmarion 7y ago
This would never pass muster in the context of freedom of speech. Instead, we should just remove money from politics entirely: campaigns should be publicly financed at a fixed amount each cycle, and term limits should be set on all elected offices. Politics should not be a career. I want a Congress that's comprised of representatives from a variety of trades and occupations: farmers, doctors, engineers, construction workers, and so on. Representing your district or state in government should be a seen as a public service of finite length — almost akin to a tour of duty in the military.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > publicly financed The trouble with that is who gets the government financing? It could easily be corrupted into an incumbent re-election fund.
  - michaelmarion 7y ago
    All candidates get an equal amount — including incumbents — and no outside or personal funds are eligible for use towards a campaign. The incumbent advantage would be negated in some part by term limits.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      How is a "candidate" determined?
      - michaelmarion 7y ago
        Ahh, I see your point. Good question.
  - zbyte64 7y ago
    The same way we determine who gets on the ballot. Next question.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      Who gets on the ballot is determined by laws designed to protect the two party system. Even so, getting on the ballot requires campaigning, which requires money. For example, there is no ballot for 2020 yet, but there's a heluva lot of campaign money being spent right now.
      - theandrewbailey 7y ago
        There's also that nasty Electoral College thing that makes the presidential election effectively 50 sub-elections. That requires each candidate to register in each state to get on their ballot. No doubt, there's fees for that.
- repsilat 7y ago
  > remove money from politics entirely I used to think that the best (and only real effective) way to get money out of politics was to get the power out of politics. If the government can't subsidise companies/sectors, protectionism shrinks. Wherever there's opportunity for influence to be bought, I thought, money would find a way. Recently there was an article on here that had a different opinion -- that there's really surprisingly little money in US politics. Worth a read: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012637
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  Term limits should also be placed on Justices. Say 10 years with a rolling limit i.e. a sitting president can only 'place' 2 justices, any other justices would need to be chosen by the house (which is more fairly distributed by #s). The senate would have to ratify/approve still but unanimous house vote chooses the supreme court. This would ensure no party controls the justice system. It might even be beneficial if they just 'alternate' maybe the president gets first pick, then the house, then the president. I think the house/justice system could also be increased quite a bit. I don't know the numbers but I'm pretty sure the # of house members is in-line w/ population of the early 1900s and is due a major overhaul, I think I heard the house could easily be tripled in size allowing a more diverse/population-centric voice. We could potentially double the house and justices, perhaps even having two supreme courts running simulatenously if there are enough cases for that, and each court could have a 'leader' who becomes tie breaker for the other court when needed. But major change is almost inevitably never going to happen in America, especially in our current climate. Maybe after 2020 when the power shifts which I'm hopefully it will shift somewhat more progressive, but then again all shit could break loose again, there's still a good year for things to hit the fan. Widening the 'voice' of America is something that will probably net benefit democrats of Republicans, as GOP is really good at controlling districting and making themselves seem a bigger 'bloc' then they really are. Though, I think that is shifting a lot of states for instance are instituting non-partisan redistricting committees to handle district changes and updates without the involvement of elected officials. Even here in Utah they voted for this to happen, so that's a good thing. Getting money out of politics though is desperately needed. I totally agree that campaigns should have a fixed amount. If they do allow donations they should only allow up to 1000 per individual and $0 from organizations. Corporations are NOT individuals NOR are they citizens. PACs should ONLY be able to push for/against propositions and issues NOT elected officials. All candidate videos should ONLY be sanctioned/pushed by the candidate not by pacs and super pacs.
09bjb 7y ago
Reversing the 2010 Citizens United decision would be a good start. Campaign finance reform (the flavor espoused by Bernie Sanders, perhaps) would be another great step. Unfortunately the recent history in this realm is one of dismantling the apparatuses that kept the exchange rate of money to political influence high. Crony, corrupt, corporate-subsidy capitalism rules, and politics is its servant.
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  I like what represent.us is doing pushing for 'anti-corruption acts' across America. If you watch their progress it really is having an effect on democracy. Enacting something like that in congress would be a HUGE win for America.
rootusrootus 7y ago
Or, perhaps, publicly fund campaigns and eliminate money as a representation of free speech. Hand out X tokens to every voter each year which represent contributions and let them distribute as they wish.
- transreal 7y ago
  This is part of Andrew Yang's platform. He calls it Democracy Dollars: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/
- conanbatt 7y ago
  I much prefer to have private money buying politicians than public money. The latter makes the politicians conspire together against the public: after all, they all win the longer, more expensive and flamboyant campaigns are. Anecodtally Argentina has public funding, and the biggest two parties ended up keeping all the public money for campaigning, and small parties have no chance. Do you think the Libertarian or Green party or Mormon parties iwll get the same money as the Dems and Reps?
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    This is why the public funding being in hands of American's makes good sense. I like Yang's proposal give all American's $500 in political cash, let them choose who to give it to. If they choose nobody then it goes back into the fund for the next election. This would also encourage politicians to actually reach out and 'touch' people enough that they give a shit to donate their political cash to that person. It might make more people get out and vote and participate in the election process. When more people vote democracy benefits.
    - conanbatt 7y ago
      I understand the concept, but still wary. First, this means people have a proxy to sell their vote (il give you my 500 dollar boucher for 100 cash), second it spends more money in campaigns than naturally. There are central premises of democracy at stake here. If monetizing political power is good then we ahouls build a way to sell votes directly.
theandrewbailey 7y ago
You're proposing that an entire class's human rights be restricted? That's not cool.
- devoply 7y ago
  So say the human rights of a few thousand as opposed to the human rights of a few million maybe billions. Seems like a just bargain.
  - jki275 7y ago
    And you are exactly why we have a Constitution.
    - devoply 7y ago
      Yes and religious fanatics have their religious books, what's your point. There are fortunately amendments that can be made to the Constitution.
      - jki275 7y ago
        I'm a fanatic about freedom, if that's your point I supposed you're correct. Of course there's a process for amendment. The process was made very difficult for a reason though.
- true_religion 7y ago
  Is it really that? Being rich is neither a human right nor a protected class. Anyone can go from rich to merely upper class easily. All the rich have to do is give away their money. To be clear, I don’t support this but I am trying to understand why you make it sound like a human right violation.

refurb 7y ago

An important thing to note about the Saez effective tax rate analysis is that it ignores transfer payments back to low income individuals. Other important assumptions have a big impact on calculated rates. Suffice to say the analysis that Saez did with Piketty, shows that the top income earners have a much higher tax rate (40% vs. 30%). This is a pretty good analysis of the issues.[1] Saez and Zucman (2019) argue that the U.S. has a relatively proportional tax system across all income levels. However, federal taxes are progressive, as shown by Piketty and Saez (2007), Auten and Splinter (2019), The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the U.S. Treasury, and the Congressional Budget Office. [1]http://www.davidsplinter.com/Splinter-TaxesAreProgressive.pdf http://www.davidsplinter.com/Splinter-TaxesAreProgressive.pd...

xhkkffbf 7y ago

I hate to be a jerk about this, but the headline bugs me. When I first heard the phrase "social justice", I assumed it meant that the people who did the work reaped the rewards. Sort of like the Little Red Hen. But here, "justice" seems to mean the opposite. No matter how the poker game works out, the dealer redistributes the winnings to everyone including those who made foolish bets. For what it's worth, I think that capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate because people are putting their own wealth on the line. Someone who buys a stock with $100 could lose the entire $100. Yet if that person gets a dividend of, say, $3 in return for the investment, the authors want this $3 to be treated like ordinary income. But people in regular jobs don't put any capital at risk. The worst that can happen is that the boss cheats them and they don't get paid. In other words, they don't get the $3. They don't put any of their savings at risk.

random023987 7y ago
Life isn't a poker game. You can't take the same rules from Vegas and apply them to health care and human rights.
- qmmmur 7y ago
  Not only that, but the parent is disregarding the human capital put on the line. Time spent educating and specialising is the equivalent of a bet at times.
- cabaalis 7y ago
  It is, though. Your employer or your clients are risking their money for future gain. To make more money than they put into it, to be "richer."
qntty 7y ago
If they don't get paid, they have lost the entire value of their labor. Why is this worth less than money? If anything it should be worth more. There are only so many hours in the day.
- 7y ago

helpPeople 7y ago

Can't we use history to figure out what's going happen next? The executive branch turns into a dictatorship (by definition, not slander, and definitely no change to the Constitution or Congress) Taxes will be too high on the masses, revolt happens, rich politicians fracture the country. Isn't this what always happens?

Qwertystop 7y ago
You're saying "taxes will be too high on the masses" but this proposal would reduce taxes on everyone below the 95th percentile (or perhaps 90th?) in income. If almost everyone gets less taxes, how will that make them too high for the masses? You can disagree on whether it'd be practical, or whether the knock-on effects would be good, or whether the philosophy behind the decision is something you agree with, or any number of other things, but... I don't see how you can see a proposal that explicitly lowers taxes in almost every bracket, and say most people are going to complain about their taxes going up.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

The calculation would be even more lopsided if health insurance was considered a tax. That's the sort of thing you have to do if you want compare American taxes against taxes in other first world countries.

dstroot 7y ago

Tax is money we contribute to a collective fund and then we elect representatives to spend it for the common good. With me so far? The people who contribute the most should have a proportional say in how it’s spent. This is “fairness”. Numerically there will be more people who contribute less and fewer people who contribute more under a regressive system. All of us share the benefits of social programs and health care even if we are not directly benefiting. Society works, and people can regain health, etc. and start contributing to the overall pool of tax money again. At no point should tax become a method to redistribute wealth - although that’s exactly what it’s become. We can all agree that some people earn so little they don’t have to pay into the “common benefit fund” (tax) but then shouldn’t they lose the right to decide how the funds are spent?

mhuffman 7y ago
If we take your thought experiment to the extreme, it could look like this: The wealth divide continues widening. After generations, and the "snowball effect", Jeff Bezos' great-grandchildren end up paying all the taxes because everyone else in the country makes so little (only enough to survive) that they don't have to pay in. At this point, a single-family has a say on how the money will be spent. And you may accept this scenario, but now that same family literally controls the movement of all food and people (through our road systems), our country's national defense, and most importantly, the ability of any of the rest of the poor people in the country to ever not be poor forever after. So, using proportional representation (as you appear to advocate) and the idea that even modest returns on very, very large amounts of money will eventually overtake the rest of the economy, we have moved from a democracy to a monarchy or oligarchy. I don't want my hard-earned saving to be taken away, so I am sympathetic, but there is still the real-world problem that if money isn't forcibly redistributed at a rate that eats into the "magic" of compound interest, it is only a matter of time before there is a problem. And if it must be redistributed, I rather it is redistributed to the government for the good of all, rather than just handed out evenly among everyone.
- zbyte64 7y ago
  You can show how X system is not sustainable but if the parent claims X system is the only "fair" system then the argument falls of deaf ears.

refurb 7y ago

I raised this in the previous discussion, but the fact the "top 400 earners" is a specific subgroup is really suspicious. Typically you'd pick a nice round number. The top 100, the top 500, the top 1000. But they picked the top 400. Why? My guess is they ran their analysis and realized their conclusion isn't supported unless they used the top 400. Notice the tax rate is nice and progressive for everyone else except that one subgroup.

bryanlarsen 7y ago
The number 400 was chosen 38 years ago by Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#78c81de07e2f https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#78c81de07e2f
- refurb 7y ago
  But that's net worth, not income. And this isn't a magazine article, it's supposed to be a academic analysis. Do they reference Forbes in the paper?
burkaman 7y ago
I can't figure out why, but it seems to have been a standard for a long time: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-top-400-individual-income-tax-returns-with-the-largest-adjusted-gross-incomes https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-top-400-individ...

cmurf 7y ago

I do think taxes on the wealthy are too low. But I also think it's politically unlikely for the tax rate to get to fairness, and I also think there's simply not enough money to go around. For sure other countries with more fair tax systems do have qualitatively less wealth inequality and my bias is I consider that a social good. But I think we're getting the diagnosis wrong. Everyone in the economic system is agreeing to participate in such a way that emphasizes elite labor. And it is that elitism in labor that causes people lower down on the ladder to see far lower wage increases. e.g. a doctor today makes 8x the salary of a nurse, whereas 30 years ago a doctor made 4x the salary of a nurse. OK so which "free market" is getting that differential wrong? Today's or the one 30 years ago? There is a cultural perception that, oh I have to see a doctor for this problem, when a nurse would suffice - this demand of needing only experience. And what you get are wealthy people seeing docs for b.s. issues because they can afford it, but it's totally unnecessary, and reduces the capacity for the doctor for things they should see. Anyway, it's not a meritocracy, it's not a free market, we have capitalism failure and govenment failure and all we really have innovated over the past fifty years is - well not much. Not even the insults in the adversarial bickering about how to solve it have improved. More unpopular than taxes, I suspect, would be adding noise (or randomness if you prefer) to elite education entry requirements. That way it's not just about wealthy parents lowering ladders in the form of money and access to elite schools for their very average children. More people need more opportunity to get ahead. We're not going to get to equal wealth, there isn't enough of it, and we probably would all agree we would like the looks of such an engineered society anyway.

anoplus 7y ago

After reading some articles and thoughts about this topic, I found this old quote in one of them which sums up what I feel: We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis D. Brandeis This was quoted in early 20th century, but I think it gets even more relevant with technological progress, as the rich have first access to tools which further perpetuates their superiority over lower classes. One important tool is to dominate major media channels, and distract the public discussion away from things like corruption, transparency and democracy.

megaman821 7y ago

I agree with taxing the rich more, perhaps by adding a few more tax brackets. The fact that these numbers do not include the EITC (earned income tax credit) is crazy. That would push the bottom quintile to near-zero or even a negative tax rate. This is fitting the data to a narrative, and comes off as dishonest.

Erudite_Genius 7y ago

Ignorant title. Same as saying "How to genocide our way back to peace.".