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> Which one is it? Public or not? The aggregate data would be public and the underlying data points would not be. Just in the same way it's possible to have a

by whakim 5y ago

> Which one is it? Public or not? The aggregate data would be public and the underlying data points would not be. Just in the same way it's possible to have a robust discussion of income equality but I can't look up how much money my neighbor earns. > Yes, which I alluded to. Now tell me, when will this end? As I said, we have an inflationary currency, so of course todays taxes will not be enough in the future. Which is why this system is a joke to me. Why are you surprised the taxes are not enough anymore? No, this is not true. Income tax brackets are updated every year, and always have been, to account for inflation. > The first income tax applied to those making more than $600/yr, which means the poor didn't pay. Today, the poor still pays, as that limit was never updated to the new "wealthy" level. Also because the left wanted a larger taxable base, for more $$$$. The 19th-century income tax only lasted a few years, was not particularly progressive, raised very little revenue, and generally bears little to no resemblance to our current income tax. The income tax we have today dates to the early 20th century. > Please avoid "other countries" as we're talking about the US and I have no clue or care about other countries tax codes or history. But we should care about other countries because their experiences can inform ours. > How so? If you tax everybody at the same low rate, say 15%, then every can pay? Whatever the minimum bracket is in the current system, use that. This will result in less tax revenue, which is why the left hates this system. If you want to construct a modern state, you need progressive taxation to raise the 40-70% of national income a year in tax revenue (all "developed" modern states do this. Places like India and South Africa don't, which explains a lot...). If you believe we should go back to a 19th-century state which collects low taxes and does little redistribution, (1) inequality would balloon; and (2) I've got bad news for you, because most people in the United States support significantly more progressive taxation. (Not to mention that the United States would quickly fall behind the rest of the world due to lack of investment in education, which is one of the primary drivers of productivity growth.)

tekknik 5y ago
> The aggregate data would be public and the underlying data points would not be. So now leaves the question, what does this report look like? > Just in the same way it's possible to have a robust discussion of income equality but I can't look up how much money my neighbor earns. Who's having these discussions? Certainly not the entirety of the political landscape is involved. This is a leftist idea, so perhaps the people on the left are having a robust discussion about wages, but the people on the right and some of the moderates (like myself) are tired of people saying they don't make enough (being self made from a poor family myself). Your idea here is yet another extension of this. You want to know what people make and own so you can determine how much tax they should pay, and if they're paying enough. I can short circuit this for you. We all know the left wants more taxes, the right wants less, and the majority of the moderates are siding with the right right now. We can safely avoid this massive headache and know the outcome desired by all parties involved. > No, this is not true. Income tax brackets are updated every year, and always have been, to account for inflation. OK you missed this one completely so I'll walk you through it a bit more. The value represented by the currency never changes. However the representation of that value does change over time and with an inflationary currency it keeps increasing. So the reason the the tax brackets and taxes are increased or updated, is because they need more money to get the same value from taxes as the previous year. With the left wanting to implement full on socialism, this will never end and we will go broke as a nation. Or put more simply, when 100% tax is implemented, and we need more, what happens then? > The 19th-century income tax only lasted a few years, was not particularly progressive, raised very little revenue, and generally bears little to no resemblance to our current income tax. The income tax we have today dates to the early 20th century. OK? > But we should care about other countries because their experiences can inform ours. No. > If you want to construct a modern state, you need progressive taxation to raise the 40-70% of national income a year in tax revenue (all "developed" modern states do this. Places like India and South Africa don't, which explains a lot...). If you believe we should go back to a 19th-century state which collects low taxes and does little redistribution, (1) inequality would balloon; and (2) I've got bad news for you, because most people in the United States support significantly more progressive taxation. (Not to mention that the United States would quickly fall behind the rest of the world due to lack of investment in education, which is one of the primary drivers of productivity growth.) So how did the US become the greatest nation prior to high taxation? How come high taxes was literally the trigger that started the rebellion? Some people have an idea that the only way to a prosperous nation is via socialism, and to those people I'd say they're brainwashed as the schools in the US have been doing for about 4 decades now. My point remains, if we continue on this path, and seek to justify further taxes we will ultimately end up with 100% income tax. And that's really the point of all of this, to implement socialism.
- whakim 5y ago
  > So now leaves the question, what does this report look like? You can slice and dice the data how you like. Again, exactly how we currently do it with income data. > Who's having these discussions? Certainly not the entirety of the political landscape is involved. The entire political landscape is involved, as evidenced by your comment that you want lower taxes. > You want to know what people make and own so you can determine how much tax they should pay, and if they're paying enough. This is literally the goal of progressive taxation. > We all know the left wants more taxes, the right wants less, and the majority of the moderates are siding with the right right now. Polls show overwhelming support for increasing taxes on the wealthy. > OK you missed this one completely so I'll walk you through it a bit more. $1 doesn't have any inherent value by itself. The value of a dollar is determined by what you can exchange it for. $1 in 1921 was significantly more valuable than $1 in 2021 - you could buy a lot more with it. This is called inflation. As long as inflation remains relatively low and predictable, it doesn't really matter in the abstract whether something costs $1 or $10 or $100 (if inflation rises quickly, that's another story of course!) There exists a metric called the Consumer Price Index which measures this inflation, and therefore the value of a dollar across time. Income tax bracket cutoffs aren't increased over time in order to raise more revenue. They are increased in order to raise the same amount of revenue after adjusting for inflation. But again, this doesn't mean anything, because inflation theoretically increases the price of everything - wages, prices, etc. > Or put more simply, when 100% tax is implemented, and we need more, what happens then? The United States had a top marginal income tax rate of 80-90% for most of the period 1950-1980. The United States economy grew much faster during this period than the period 1980-present, when top marginal tax rates were much lower. The point isn't to implement a 100% income tax. It's to make the tax system more progressive, which enables further investments in education, research, and health care, which fuels growth. > So how did the US become the greatest nation prior to high taxation? By most economic measures, the United States wasn't the strongest country in the world until the first half of the twentieth century. Some of the reasons for that include lower levels of inequality with respect to education in the late 19th century compared to most European nations; the earlier implementation of progressive income taxes compared to those nations; greater investments in education compared to France and Germany (and especially the UK) that led to higher per capita productivity; not suffering as much economic damage from the two World Wars; etc. > How come high taxes was literally the trigger that started the rebellion? The revolution had nothing to do with high taxes (taxes were very low, in fact - see https://taxfoundation.org/taxation-representation-american-revolution/ https://taxfoundation.org/taxation-representation-american-r...). It had to do with unfair taxation. And that's exactly what this whole argument is about: the wealthy pay unfairly low taxes because of tax havens and an inability to properly tax wealth.

by whakim 5y ago

tekknik 5y ago

> The aggregate data would be public and the underlying data points would not be. So now leaves the question, what does this report look like? > Just in the same way it's possible to have a robust discussion of income equality but I can't look up how much money my neighbor earns. Who's having these discussions? Certainly not the entirety of the political landscape is involved. This is a leftist idea, so perhaps the people on the left are having a robust discussion about wages, but the people on the right and some of the moderates (like myself) are tired of people saying they don't make enough (being self made from a poor family myself). Your idea here is yet another extension of this. You want to know what people make and own so you can determine how much tax they should pay, and if they're paying enough. I can short circuit this for you. We all know the left wants more taxes, the right wants less, and the majority of the moderates are siding with the right right now. We can safely avoid this massive headache and know the outcome desired by all parties involved. > No, this is not true. Income tax brackets are updated every year, and always have been, to account for inflation. OK you missed this one completely so I'll walk you through it a bit more. The value represented by the currency never changes. However the representation of that value does change over time and with an inflationary currency it keeps increasing. So the reason the the tax brackets and taxes are increased or updated, is because they need more money to get the same value from taxes as the previous year. With the left wanting to implement full on socialism, this will never end and we will go broke as a nation. Or put more simply, when 100% tax is implemented, and we need more, what happens then? > The 19th-century income tax only lasted a few years, was not particularly progressive, raised very little revenue, and generally bears little to no resemblance to our current income tax. The income tax we have today dates to the early 20th century. OK? > But we should care about other countries because their experiences can inform ours. No. > If you want to construct a modern state, you need progressive taxation to raise the 40-70% of national income a year in tax revenue (all "developed" modern states do this. Places like India and South Africa don't, which explains a lot...). If you believe we should go back to a 19th-century state which collects low taxes and does little redistribution, (1) inequality would balloon; and (2) I've got bad news for you, because most people in the United States support significantly more progressive taxation. (Not to mention that the United States would quickly fall behind the rest of the world due to lack of investment in education, which is one of the primary drivers of productivity growth.) So how did the US become the greatest nation prior to high taxation? How come high taxes was literally the trigger that started the rebellion? Some people have an idea that the only way to a prosperous nation is via socialism, and to those people I'd say they're brainwashed as the schools in the US have been doing for about 4 decades now. My point remains, if we continue on this path, and seek to justify further taxes we will ultimately end up with 100% income tax. And that's really the point of all of this, to implement socialism.

whakim 5y ago
> So now leaves the question, what does this report look like? You can slice and dice the data how you like. Again, exactly how we currently do it with income data. > Who's having these discussions? Certainly not the entirety of the political landscape is involved. The entire political landscape is involved, as evidenced by your comment that you want lower taxes. > You want to know what people make and own so you can determine how much tax they should pay, and if they're paying enough. This is literally the goal of progressive taxation. > We all know the left wants more taxes, the right wants less, and the majority of the moderates are siding with the right right now. Polls show overwhelming support for increasing taxes on the wealthy. > OK you missed this one completely so I'll walk you through it a bit more. $1 doesn't have any inherent value by itself. The value of a dollar is determined by what you can exchange it for. $1 in 1921 was significantly more valuable than $1 in 2021 - you could buy a lot more with it. This is called inflation. As long as inflation remains relatively low and predictable, it doesn't really matter in the abstract whether something costs $1 or $10 or $100 (if inflation rises quickly, that's another story of course!) There exists a metric called the Consumer Price Index which measures this inflation, and therefore the value of a dollar across time. Income tax bracket cutoffs aren't increased over time in order to raise more revenue. They are increased in order to raise the same amount of revenue after adjusting for inflation. But again, this doesn't mean anything, because inflation theoretically increases the price of everything - wages, prices, etc. > Or put more simply, when 100% tax is implemented, and we need more, what happens then? The United States had a top marginal income tax rate of 80-90% for most of the period 1950-1980. The United States economy grew much faster during this period than the period 1980-present, when top marginal tax rates were much lower. The point isn't to implement a 100% income tax. It's to make the tax system more progressive, which enables further investments in education, research, and health care, which fuels growth. > So how did the US become the greatest nation prior to high taxation? By most economic measures, the United States wasn't the strongest country in the world until the first half of the twentieth century. Some of the reasons for that include lower levels of inequality with respect to education in the late 19th century compared to most European nations; the earlier implementation of progressive income taxes compared to those nations; greater investments in education compared to France and Germany (and especially the UK) that led to higher per capita productivity; not suffering as much economic damage from the two World Wars; etc. > How come high taxes was literally the trigger that started the rebellion? The revolution had nothing to do with high taxes (taxes were very low, in fact - see https://taxfoundation.org/taxation-representation-american-revolution/ https://taxfoundation.org/taxation-representation-american-r...). It had to do with unfair taxation. And that's exactly what this whole argument is about: the wealthy pay unfairly low taxes because of tax havens and an inability to properly tax wealth.