5 ms·

>The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes What exactly is a fair tax?

by dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

yonaguska 4y ago
By the founders definitions? At least 90 percent of the taxes we pay are not fair.
- mellavora 4y ago
  What percentage of the services provided by today's government were not around at the founding? I'd very much like to see government downsize, but if you want to pay taxes at the level at which the country was founded, you also have to restrict government activity to that level. Not sure if that is tenable.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  I was thinking more along lines of 100% ... But hey, point taken taken, we are generally in agreement.
olyjohn 4y ago
Any tax others have to pay, that I don't.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
No tax is fair. They're all involuntary transactions. The US is the textbook experiment which proves that even minarchy (a minimal government) can't work. All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). Even if that very first government was founded on not collecting very little taxes for this very reason.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). The USA have 330 million citizens and 10 million people without valid residency, in total something around 340 million citizens. The public sector clocks in at 15%, which includes the military and USPS. That is, seriously, not much. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-service-and-the-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-servi...
  - hartator 4y ago
    U.S. total public spending is around 40% of the GDP. [1] [1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      So what? It's not like that money is lost. It ends all back in the economy because people spend their wages.
      - logicchains 4y ago
        Money is just paper. The _value_ is lost; if the government buys itself a banana, that's one less banana available to the people.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    It's sort of like how when developers learn how much they cost the company per hour and they get mad about how they don't get to take more of that home. Well, say you work at a company with 100 developers. That's who's making the stuff. Everybody else is there to make sure the stuff gets made. There's a manager for every 6-8 developers (13-17), and there's a couple managers for those managers. Add in HR and you're already up to about a 25% overhead and we haven't talked about equipment and buildings and customer management and advertising and litigation and taxes and so on and so forth.
chrischen 3y ago
Whatever the consensus is.
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  Good, let tax some minority/marginalized section of the society so that their living becomes hell.

>The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes What exactly is a fair tax?

yonaguska 4y ago

By the founders definitions? At least 90 percent of the taxes we pay are not fair.

mellavora 4y ago
What percentage of the services provided by today's government were not around at the founding? I'd very much like to see government downsize, but if you want to pay taxes at the level at which the country was founded, you also have to restrict government activity to that level. Not sure if that is tenable.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
I was thinking more along lines of 100% ... But hey, point taken taken, we are generally in agreement.

olyjohn 4y ago

Any tax others have to pay, that I don't.

jokethrowaway 4y ago

No tax is fair. They're all involuntary transactions. The US is the textbook experiment which proves that even minarchy (a minimal government) can't work. All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). Even if that very first government was founded on not collecting very little taxes for this very reason.

mschuster91 4y ago
> All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). The USA have 330 million citizens and 10 million people without valid residency, in total something around 340 million citizens. The public sector clocks in at 15%, which includes the military and USPS. That is, seriously, not much. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-service-and-the-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-servi...
- hartator 4y ago
  U.S. total public spending is around 40% of the GDP. [1] [1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    So what? It's not like that money is lost. It ends all back in the economy because people spend their wages.
    - logicchains 4y ago
      Money is just paper. The _value_ is lost; if the government buys itself a banana, that's one less banana available to the people.
- hinkley 4y ago
  It's sort of like how when developers learn how much they cost the company per hour and they get mad about how they don't get to take more of that home. Well, say you work at a company with 100 developers. That's who's making the stuff. Everybody else is there to make sure the stuff gets made. There's a manager for every 6-8 developers (13-17), and there's a couple managers for those managers. Add in HR and you're already up to about a 25% overhead and we haven't talked about equipment and buildings and customer management and advertising and litigation and taxes and so on and so forth.

chrischen 3y ago

Whatever the consensus is.

dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
Good, let tax some minority/marginalized section of the society so that their living becomes hell.