5 ms·

Idk where you get your data, but that slice of earners you mention pays maybe 20% of the taxes In This country, tops (assuming you mean USA). https://taxfounda

by RC_ITR 6y ago

Idk where you get your data, but that slice of earners you mention pays maybe 20% of the taxes In This country, tops (assuming you mean USA). https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...

internetslave 6y ago
Work hard! Don’t worry if we print money and triple the cost of your house and new mortgage! You are in the top 15%! Look you only pay 20% of the taxes, never mind all that money we printed! It’s not a tax!
- RC_ITR 6y ago
  So you agree with me that one premise was wrong, but you want to double down on your other premises, which are less wrong, but still lack meaningful nuance? Chill.
  - internetslave 6y ago
    I’m saying the tax argument is flawed. They are debasing wages and acting like that’s not the case
- oceanghost 6y ago
  I feel you brother but you're mad at the wrong people. It's banks and REIT's and corporations and foreign investors buying up houses, not poor people.
- tangjurine 6y ago
  Where did that money go to? To the "socialist" stimulus checks? The majority of money printed was loaned out to banks and other institutions, which promptly put that money back into the stock market and other investments. Think about it this way. Would you rather have your investments crash and pay the same taxes, or take the tax increase and also have your investments go up? If you would prefer the second, you benefited from the government's actions. In fact, I feel the lower class were the ones that the government took from, in the form of impending inflation.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Yeah, it's a loan, when you pay the loan back the money supply actually ends up contracting again and only the residual interest payments are actually added to the economy.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
It's noteworthy that this would still be about seven times as much as the entire bottom 50% of income taxpayers.
- jolux 6y ago
  Do you expect everyone to pay the same amount of taxes?
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    No, I don't. My turn: do you expect more than half of all households in America to be paying no federal income tax at all?
    - medvezhenok 5y ago
      Why would they pay income tax, if the point is to redistribute the money collected back to them? Seems like instead of collecting $x amount of tax from them in order to give it back in benefits, we could just not have them pay tax (which is the case currently). The real answer is - raise their wages, and then they will be paying more in federal taxes (just like the upper quartiles are). USA lower tier professionals (Doctors, Lawyers, Programmers, have a anticompetitive racket - they should all get a 20-30% net haircut in salary, tech should be regulated, we should increase admission to med-school and allow nurse practitioners to serve as doctors, etc.). I say this as someone who benefits greatly from the current system, but also realizes how fucked up it is. Finance people should be taxed out the wazoo - watching stocks tick up and down on the market is a waste of time and most of them defraud people anyway, estate and wealth tax should be a thing, if they try to denounce citizenship to get away, immediate tax of 50% of [unrealized] profits (we currently do 20%). Even that wouldn't get us back to how things were in the 1960s, but it would at least be closer, and probably makes things better in the mean time.
      - jolux 5y ago
        I'm not denying that programmers get paid a lot or that our taxes shouldn't be higher but it's a different situation from being a doctor or a lawyer. I have no degree and am entirely self-taught. I would not be able to practice law or medicine without getting one. However, I am a professional software engineer. Programmers get paid a lot because the market is extremely competitive. Doctors get paid a lot because healthcare in the US is essentially one massive cartel and incredibly inefficient as a result. In most countries, doctors and programmers make similar salaries.

by RC_ITR 6y ago

internetslave 6y ago

Work hard! Don’t worry if we print money and triple the cost of your house and new mortgage! You are in the top 15%! Look you only pay 20% of the taxes, never mind all that money we printed! It’s not a tax!

RC_ITR 6y ago
So you agree with me that one premise was wrong, but you want to double down on your other premises, which are less wrong, but still lack meaningful nuance? Chill.
- internetslave 6y ago
  I’m saying the tax argument is flawed. They are debasing wages and acting like that’s not the case
oceanghost 6y ago
I feel you brother but you're mad at the wrong people. It's banks and REIT's and corporations and foreign investors buying up houses, not poor people.
tangjurine 6y ago
Where did that money go to? To the "socialist" stimulus checks? The majority of money printed was loaned out to banks and other institutions, which promptly put that money back into the stock market and other investments. Think about it this way. Would you rather have your investments crash and pay the same taxes, or take the tax increase and also have your investments go up? If you would prefer the second, you benefited from the government's actions. In fact, I feel the lower class were the ones that the government took from, in the form of impending inflation.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Yeah, it's a loan, when you pay the loan back the money supply actually ends up contracting again and only the residual interest payments are actually added to the economy.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

It's noteworthy that this would still be about seven times as much as the entire bottom 50% of income taxpayers.

jolux 6y ago
Do you expect everyone to pay the same amount of taxes?
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  No, I don't. My turn: do you expect more than half of all households in America to be paying no federal income tax at all?
  - medvezhenok 5y ago
    Why would they pay income tax, if the point is to redistribute the money collected back to them? Seems like instead of collecting $x amount of tax from them in order to give it back in benefits, we could just not have them pay tax (which is the case currently). The real answer is - raise their wages, and then they will be paying more in federal taxes (just like the upper quartiles are). USA lower tier professionals (Doctors, Lawyers, Programmers, have a anticompetitive racket - they should all get a 20-30% net haircut in salary, tech should be regulated, we should increase admission to med-school and allow nurse practitioners to serve as doctors, etc.). I say this as someone who benefits greatly from the current system, but also realizes how fucked up it is. Finance people should be taxed out the wazoo - watching stocks tick up and down on the market is a waste of time and most of them defraud people anyway, estate and wealth tax should be a thing, if they try to denounce citizenship to get away, immediate tax of 50% of [unrealized] profits (we currently do 20%). Even that wouldn't get us back to how things were in the 1960s, but it would at least be closer, and probably makes things better in the mean time.
    - jolux 5y ago
      I'm not denying that programmers get paid a lot or that our taxes shouldn't be higher but it's a different situation from being a doctor or a lawyer. I have no degree and am entirely self-taught. I would not be able to practice law or medicine without getting one. However, I am a professional software engineer. Programmers get paid a lot because the market is extremely competitive. Doctors get paid a lot because healthcare in the US is essentially one massive cartel and incredibly inefficient as a result. In most countries, doctors and programmers make similar salaries.