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As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_theory https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

nobodyandproud 3y ago
Most of us here know, but note that the slights of hand are just too good. They can also hire people to shill in every major forum, so there’s a huge uphill battle just to avoid getting drowned out.
- xracy 3y ago
  I mean... People say this, as if no one knows where the money is, and we've tried everything. When in fact, everyone knows where the money is, and we've tried very little in the ways of actually taxing rich people. I have no doubt that if we actually raised taxation rates (Corporate Stock Grants is an easy one that everyone on here will pretend is impossible), corporations, and rich folks would start paying more in taxes. Maybe they would still dodge, but until we actually start doing something saying "nothing will work" is like saying "there's no way to hammer a nail all the way into a board" when you haven't actually hit the nail with the hammer. Edit: Of course it's un uphill battle if you've done nothing. Everything is an uphill battle when you're not doing anything about it.
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    There’s power in organization, yet the middle class is disorganized. This outcome isn’t by accident and it’s a huge undertaking to just get past the tribal bullshit just to have a sane conversation.
    - xracy 3y ago
      Yeah, but that's no excuse to give up without trying... I get it's hard, but it's not impossible. And it's probably just necessary if we want to survive as a species...
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
It should be noted we still “tax” them, as in the laws in place put income tax down, but they grow wealth by paying people full time to legally skirt taxation via schemes like this. However considering the current state of bloat governments are in, I’m not sure that extra money would actually mean anything. Except more to funnel into the military industrial complex and other black book projects.
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  > I’m not sure that extra money would actually mean anything In an ideal democracy it would. Its yet again misrepresented interests. And as an extend to my side note: The decades long shift of interest representation went from the public to the private sphere. The distrust in goverment may be justified, but its no counter argument, because the means of democratic participation is the only viable tool we have left. FUD helps the parasites. Democracies cannot fail, only the people in it do.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - throwawayqqq11 3y ago
      Do you know the last successful, citizen-only driven revolution? I would guess the french revolution ~1790 and it was a bloodbath. Today, the military technology has extended the power gap so much, that chopping heads off is no option for eg. north koreans without support from the outside. I think a violent revolution would only tighten the surveilance state.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        The ven diagram of people who tell me that we can't possibly overthrow the government contrasted with people who say January 6th was a threat to democracy is essentially a circle.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.
- koolba 3y ago
  There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “the rich are not paying their fair share”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough to be his fair share? Is it reasonable for society, through taxes, to take more than half of what you earn? (e.g., in CA the top brackets out you at 37% federal + 12.3% State = 49.3% tax rate. And that’s before sales tax!)
  - elmalto 3y ago
    Sure as long as the society spends it on things that it deems important. Why is money made from money not taxed the same money made from labor? On the other hand, if money is considered free speech in the US, how can we even allow taxation at all? Isn’t taxation a form of censorship?
  - markdown 3y ago
    > Is it reasonable for society, through taxes, to take more than half of what you earn? So long as you have more than enough to live on, absolutely. If you make a billion dollars, then the govt taking 501 million is the absolute minimum that should be expected. Better they take 999 million and leave you the million dollars, as you don't need more than that to survive. Further, the only reason you made a billion was from not paying the workers a living wage. The government's job is to redistribute the money so that everyone gets a fair share.
    - t43562 3y ago
      The point of people being wealthy is that they get to take risks based on their judgement and we hope that benefits everyone. Without a reward nobody will take risks. Governments don't take political risks so you cannot expect them to be the sole chance takers in the economy. What we obviously don't want is people who find a way to dump risk on everyone else so that they cannot fail. Not paying a living wage is a way to do that for example.
dools 3y ago
The bigger problem is a fear of public spending because of perceived incompetence. The stigma comes from a time when only governments had run big bureaucratic systems. Now we can see there is little difference between public and private bureaucracies except for a lack of oversight on the latter. Still the stigma remains and all public spending is filtered through a profit making entity.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  Well, fix government oversight of public bureaucracies and then we can have a discussion. As it is now, it's pretty clear that elected officials have little control and oversight into the bureaucracies that they nominally control and direct. Make bureaucrats firable. End Chevron deference. Bring back political appointments from the top to the bottom of the bureaucracy.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    this is exactly true in nearby large counties, US West
  - macintux 3y ago
    > Bring back political appointments from the top to the bottom of the bureaucracy. Good heavens no. Turn over the bureaucracy every few years, bringing in political sycophants to replace people who actually understand the system (and, by and large, follow the law instead of kowtowing to the current demagogue-in-charge)?
    - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
      [dead]
- fifticon 3y ago
  I see a lot of propaganda expended on convincing the voting public of this "public incompentence", almost as if someone is paying to maintain this status quo.
refurb 3y ago
One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. Taxes as a percentage of GDP are pretty steady over time. We aren't really taxing less. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
- tmnvix 3y ago
  You can both be right if you assume a shift away from taxing wealth to taxing income (or unearned to earned income).
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  I think tieing tax income to gdp is as deceptive as hiding your income to dodge taxes. The ultra wealthy can shift their assets as they please, the poor cannot. Maybe thats the reason why the graph is steady.
  - refurb 3y ago
    I mean most of the really rich are rich from investments. Unless you're arguing that the banks and large companies are breaking the law by avoiding their reporting requirements to the IRS (to what benefit?) that makes no sense.
    - metaphor 3y ago
      The games played by the wealthy and well-advised are largely within the gray areas of tax code buried between legal avoidance and illegal evasion[1]...in other words, certain sophisticated behavior remains "legal" if the IRS never gets an opportunity to audit and pursue litigation against. Herein lies the moral hazard bullshit. To tilt these game-theoretic bets overwhelmingly in favor of the wealthy, assert continuous political pressure to defund IRS activity tasked with holding these actors legally accountable while shilling it to the ignorant public with a bullshit title like "Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection" to bait popular support[2; § 251]. The CBO too is well-advised[3], but the wealthy very much dislike projected outcomes summarized[4] as: > The proposal, by contrast, would return audit rates to the levels of about 10 years ago; the rate would rise for all taxpayers, but higher-income taxpayers would face the largest increase. In addition, the Administration’s policies would focus additional IRS resources on enforcement activity aimed at high-wealth taxpayers, large corporations, and partnerships. [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w28542 https://www.nber.org/papers/w28542 [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3746 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3746 [3] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 [4] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444
littlestymaar 3y ago
We stopped taxing them and started to borrow from them instead.
00ff 3y ago
False, we never stopped taxing the rich. We reduced top marginal income tax rates though, so they moved more money into income and stopped hiding as much in shell companies and inventory. The top 1% earn 20% of national income, but their taxes comprise 40% of federal income tax revenue. US Gini coefficient (inequality measure) decreases by a third after accounting for taxes and transfers.
- karpierz 3y ago
  You start by saying that wealthy people can pretty freely manipulate the amount of income they show for tax purposes. The follow-up is that based on the manipulated income data, wealthy people pay disproportionately more taxes?
  - twoodfin 3y ago
    Right. The current low rates provide much stronger incentives to accurately report income vs. less efficient tax shelters and in-lieu-of-cash benefits. So we expect taxable income statistics to more accurately capture real earnings than under earlier tax regimes (particularly pre-1986).
- Swenrekcah 3y ago
  Assets should be taxed progressively. Capitalism results in the power coming from capital. Therefore capital taxes should be the primary taxation mechanism. There are issues with it such as cashflow problems and more, but all systems have issues and they can be overcome.
  - jcfrei 3y ago
    Exactly, taxing assets instead of income is a no-brainer. All income that is not used for consumption becomes an asset itself and if people cant consume all their income then that should be taxed. The reason it isnt done is that any country that introduces wealth / assets taxes experiences immediate wealth flight (see Norway for a recent example). A wealth tax can only be done at a global level for example through the OECD.

nobodyandproud 3y ago

Most of us here know, but note that the slights of hand are just too good. They can also hire people to shill in every major forum, so there’s a huge uphill battle just to avoid getting drowned out.

xracy 3y ago
I mean... People say this, as if no one knows where the money is, and we've tried everything. When in fact, everyone knows where the money is, and we've tried very little in the ways of actually taxing rich people. I have no doubt that if we actually raised taxation rates (Corporate Stock Grants is an easy one that everyone on here will pretend is impossible), corporations, and rich folks would start paying more in taxes. Maybe they would still dodge, but until we actually start doing something saying "nothing will work" is like saying "there's no way to hammer a nail all the way into a board" when you haven't actually hit the nail with the hammer. Edit: Of course it's un uphill battle if you've done nothing. Everything is an uphill battle when you're not doing anything about it.
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  There’s power in organization, yet the middle class is disorganized. This outcome isn’t by accident and it’s a huge undertaking to just get past the tribal bullshit just to have a sane conversation.
  - xracy 3y ago
    Yeah, but that's no excuse to give up without trying... I get it's hard, but it's not impossible. And it's probably just necessary if we want to survive as a species...

tourmalinetaco 3y ago

It should be noted we still “tax” them, as in the laws in place put income tax down, but they grow wealth by paying people full time to legally skirt taxation via schemes like this. However considering the current state of bloat governments are in, I’m not sure that extra money would actually mean anything. Except more to funnel into the military industrial complex and other black book projects.

throwawayqqq11 3y ago
> I’m not sure that extra money would actually mean anything In an ideal democracy it would. Its yet again misrepresented interests. And as an extend to my side note: The decades long shift of interest representation went from the public to the private sphere. The distrust in goverment may be justified, but its no counter argument, because the means of democratic participation is the only viable tool we have left. FUD helps the parasites. Democracies cannot fail, only the people in it do.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwawayqqq11 3y ago
    Do you know the last successful, citizen-only driven revolution? I would guess the french revolution ~1790 and it was a bloodbath. Today, the military technology has extended the power gap so much, that chopping heads off is no option for eg. north koreans without support from the outside. I think a violent revolution would only tighten the surveilance state.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      The ven diagram of people who tell me that we can't possibly overthrow the government contrasted with people who say January 6th was a threat to democracy is essentially a circle.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.

koolba 3y ago
There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “the rich are not paying their fair share”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough to be his fair share? Is it reasonable for society, through taxes, to take more than half of what you earn? (e.g., in CA the top brackets out you at 37% federal + 12.3% State = 49.3% tax rate. And that’s before sales tax!)
- elmalto 3y ago
  Sure as long as the society spends it on things that it deems important. Why is money made from money not taxed the same money made from labor? On the other hand, if money is considered free speech in the US, how can we even allow taxation at all? Isn’t taxation a form of censorship?
- markdown 3y ago
  > Is it reasonable for society, through taxes, to take more than half of what you earn? So long as you have more than enough to live on, absolutely. If you make a billion dollars, then the govt taking 501 million is the absolute minimum that should be expected. Better they take 999 million and leave you the million dollars, as you don't need more than that to survive. Further, the only reason you made a billion was from not paying the workers a living wage. The government's job is to redistribute the money so that everyone gets a fair share.
  - t43562 3y ago
    The point of people being wealthy is that they get to take risks based on their judgement and we hope that benefits everyone. Without a reward nobody will take risks. Governments don't take political risks so you cannot expect them to be the sole chance takers in the economy. What we obviously don't want is people who find a way to dump risk on everyone else so that they cannot fail. Not paying a living wage is a way to do that for example.

dools 3y ago

The bigger problem is a fear of public spending because of perceived incompetence. The stigma comes from a time when only governments had run big bureaucratic systems. Now we can see there is little difference between public and private bureaucracies except for a lack of oversight on the latter. Still the stigma remains and all public spending is filtered through a profit making entity.

AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
Well, fix government oversight of public bureaucracies and then we can have a discussion. As it is now, it's pretty clear that elected officials have little control and oversight into the bureaucracies that they nominally control and direct. Make bureaucrats firable. End Chevron deference. Bring back political appointments from the top to the bottom of the bureaucracy.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  this is exactly true in nearby large counties, US West
- macintux 3y ago
  > Bring back political appointments from the top to the bottom of the bureaucracy. Good heavens no. Turn over the bureaucracy every few years, bringing in political sycophants to replace people who actually understand the system (and, by and large, follow the law instead of kowtowing to the current demagogue-in-charge)?
  - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
    [dead]
fifticon 3y ago
I see a lot of propaganda expended on convincing the voting public of this "public incompentence", almost as if someone is paying to maintain this status quo.

refurb 3y ago

One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. Taxes as a percentage of GDP are pretty steady over time. We aren't really taxing less. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

tmnvix 3y ago
You can both be right if you assume a shift away from taxing wealth to taxing income (or unearned to earned income).
throwawayqqq11 3y ago
I think tieing tax income to gdp is as deceptive as hiding your income to dodge taxes. The ultra wealthy can shift their assets as they please, the poor cannot. Maybe thats the reason why the graph is steady.
- refurb 3y ago
  I mean most of the really rich are rich from investments. Unless you're arguing that the banks and large companies are breaking the law by avoiding their reporting requirements to the IRS (to what benefit?) that makes no sense.
  - metaphor 3y ago
    The games played by the wealthy and well-advised are largely within the gray areas of tax code buried between legal avoidance and illegal evasion[1]...in other words, certain sophisticated behavior remains "legal" if the IRS never gets an opportunity to audit and pursue litigation against. Herein lies the moral hazard bullshit. To tilt these game-theoretic bets overwhelmingly in favor of the wealthy, assert continuous political pressure to defund IRS activity tasked with holding these actors legally accountable while shilling it to the ignorant public with a bullshit title like "Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection" to bait popular support[2; § 251]. The CBO too is well-advised[3], but the wealthy very much dislike projected outcomes summarized[4] as: > The proposal, by contrast, would return audit rates to the levels of about 10 years ago; the rate would rise for all taxpayers, but higher-income taxpayers would face the largest increase. In addition, the Administration’s policies would focus additional IRS resources on enforcement activity aimed at high-wealth taxpayers, large corporations, and partnerships. [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w28542 https://www.nber.org/papers/w28542 [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3746 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3746 [3] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 [4] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444

littlestymaar 3y ago

We stopped taxing them and started to borrow from them instead.

00ff 3y ago

False, we never stopped taxing the rich. We reduced top marginal income tax rates though, so they moved more money into income and stopped hiding as much in shell companies and inventory. The top 1% earn 20% of national income, but their taxes comprise 40% of federal income tax revenue. US Gini coefficient (inequality measure) decreases by a third after accounting for taxes and transfers.

karpierz 3y ago
You start by saying that wealthy people can pretty freely manipulate the amount of income they show for tax purposes. The follow-up is that based on the manipulated income data, wealthy people pay disproportionately more taxes?
- twoodfin 3y ago
  Right. The current low rates provide much stronger incentives to accurately report income vs. less efficient tax shelters and in-lieu-of-cash benefits. So we expect taxable income statistics to more accurately capture real earnings than under earlier tax regimes (particularly pre-1986).
Swenrekcah 3y ago
Assets should be taxed progressively. Capitalism results in the power coming from capital. Therefore capital taxes should be the primary taxation mechanism. There are issues with it such as cashflow problems and more, but all systems have issues and they can be overcome.
- jcfrei 3y ago
  Exactly, taxing assets instead of income is a no-brainer. All income that is not used for consumption becomes an asset itself and if people cant consume all their income then that should be taxed. The reason it isnt done is that any country that introduces wealth / assets taxes experiences immediate wealth flight (see Norway for a recent example). A wealth tax can only be done at a global level for example through the OECD.