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I pay enough tax. I should not have to continue to pay more to make up for the frivolous government spending on "social justice programs", wars, more police, an

I pay enough tax. I should not have to continue to pay more to make up for the frivolous government spending on "social justice programs", wars, more police, and bailouts for campaign donating companies. More tax doesn't fix widespread, rampant, government corruption. The US takes in enough tax to have plenty of nice things. For citizens to see any benefit the military industrial complex needs to be defanged with prejudice, the US needs to pull out of all foreign police actions, etc. The highways and roads I drive on are terrible. Let's start there. Why is that in such a poor state with me paying 35% marginal tax? Where is my money going? Yep that's right, "social justice consultants" and the military industrial complex. On the UBI note it would never work out anyway. Yang's numbers were several order of magnitudes off similar to Bernie's healthcare numbers. We'd have to collect far more money than we could even with a progressive tax system and that's if we only offered it to actual naturalized citizens. If we offered to everyone who exists in America there's absolutely no way it would work simply by the numbers. These programs work in countries with defined borders, strong citizenship laws, homogenous cultures, and populations 1/10th the size of America. We are different. We need different solutions.

MattRix 5y ago
Absolutely agree about the tremendous amount of money wasted on the military and policing, but not sure why you’re putting “social justice consultants” in that same category, when they have many orders of magnitude less impact on the budget.
naasking 5y ago
> If we offered to everyone who exists in America there's absolutely no way it would work simply by the numbers. I don't see why. You just appropriately set the amount paid out and the tax tier at which you cross into the red and are paying back into it. Are you suggesting that this threshold is barely above the poverty line? Because that's the only way it wouldn't actually work.
gremlinsinc 5y ago
If we raised separate tax on land (that isn't a primary residence) and luxury property (aircraft, yachts, - anything exceeding 500k)... Say you have a home you live in that's 300k. You also have a guest house you airbnb and make 50k/year on. There's considered 0 'value' in a primary residence, however you're making 50k/year value off your additional rent. So you'd pay tax on that, above and beyond any other tax. If you have commercial or other real estate rentals you'd pay as well. The key is that you'd need to somehow peg the tax rate with inflation, and housing prices, etc...to basically make it a self-organized check-system to keep rents from rising, because rising rents means higher taxes. Perhaps you actually tie the LVT to census data on homeless in a region, less homeless = less taxes, therefore creating solutions to that problem actually is a win:win...
Wiseacre 5y ago
It's kind of insane how hung up you are on social justice consultants. How much of the budget do you think they take up? People here love using buzzwords lately like "woke" as a nonsensical bogeyman for anything they don't like.

MattRix 5y ago

Absolutely agree about the tremendous amount of money wasted on the military and policing, but not sure why you’re putting “social justice consultants” in that same category, when they have many orders of magnitude less impact on the budget.

naasking 5y ago

> If we offered to everyone who exists in America there's absolutely no way it would work simply by the numbers. I don't see why. You just appropriately set the amount paid out and the tax tier at which you cross into the red and are paying back into it. Are you suggesting that this threshold is barely above the poverty line? Because that's the only way it wouldn't actually work.

gremlinsinc 5y ago

If we raised separate tax on land (that isn't a primary residence) and luxury property (aircraft, yachts, - anything exceeding 500k)... Say you have a home you live in that's 300k. You also have a guest house you airbnb and make 50k/year on. There's considered 0 'value' in a primary residence, however you're making 50k/year value off your additional rent. So you'd pay tax on that, above and beyond any other tax. If you have commercial or other real estate rentals you'd pay as well. The key is that you'd need to somehow peg the tax rate with inflation, and housing prices, etc...to basically make it a self-organized check-system to keep rents from rising, because rising rents means higher taxes. Perhaps you actually tie the LVT to census data on homeless in a region, less homeless = less taxes, therefore creating solutions to that problem actually is a win:win...

Wiseacre 5y ago

It's kind of insane how hung up you are on social justice consultants. How much of the budget do you think they take up? People here love using buzzwords lately like "woke" as a nonsensical bogeyman for anything they don't like.