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The top 1% of people make 20.7% of the country's income. Given progressive tax rates, they should be paying a lot more than 40% of Federal income tax revenue, b

• listenallyall 1y ago
  Can you explain your reasoning behind "they should be paying a lot more"? I kept hearing that they didn't pay their "fair share" when in fact it appears they pay double. It just seems like whatever they actually pay, measured in dollars or as a percentage, will always be widely regarded as not enough.
  • roenxi 1y ago
    There are a couple of key phrases in politics that get used because there is no actual justification. "Fair" is one of them. It is impossible to achieve fairness in the tax system under any circumstances, it is always taking from someone who - from the fact that it isn't voluntary - we can assume quite likely disagrees with how the money is about to be used. Taxes are fundamentally arbitrary. So in practice, if "fair" is used in politics the appropriate reading is often as a euphemism for "I think we have the numbers to push this interpretation of the world on people; it'll be good for us".
  • tomlockwood 1y ago
    Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? At what point would you accept that someone has more money than they'd reasonably need? And if you just thought of a maximum amount, then, wouldn't the acceptable tax rate over that amount, be 100%?
    • throwaway-blaze 1y ago
      Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in? I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so? I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.
      • tomlockwood 1y ago
        So you'd rather have someone unelected with that money. Don't y'all live in a democracy?
        • WalterBright 1y ago
          We live in a Constitutional republic, with a Bill of Rights and the right to own property.
          • tomlockwood 1y ago
            So, no?
            • WalterBright 1y ago
              Correct. Look up "Constitutional republic".
              • tomlockwood 1y ago
                https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/lesson-plans/Government_and_You_handouts.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/lesson-pl...
    • WalterBright 1y ago
      > Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? Sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687828
      • tomlockwood 1y ago
        Not sure any of these companies have really appreciably made the lives of people better. Sure seem to have funnelled more money to Elon though.
        • WalterBright 1y ago
          No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it. As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
          • tomlockwood 1y ago
            > No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it. No he didn't. > Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better. So is meth.
          • roenxi 1y ago
            > No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it. Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets. Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
    • overrun11 1y ago
      So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?
      • tomlockwood 1y ago
        I am alarmed by how quickly Americans leap from the suggestion that we tax the super-wealthy more, to this idea of full communism.
  • shakna 1y ago
    The top 1% aren't the billionaires. It's also not most of the millionaires. It's people earning a tiny bit less than 700k a year. The suggestion is simply that the top 0.1% pay more - as they will be little affected by it.
    • WalterBright 1y ago
      > as they will be little affected by it Everything you tax away from wealthy people is removed from their investments. For example, if all of Musk's income above $1m were taxed away, the following companies would never have existed: 1. Tesla 2. SpaceX 3. Starlink 4. Neuralink
      • sgc 1y ago
        I am going to abstract from the hard 1 million number which is obviously low in 2025, and just base my arguments on maybe a few million as a reasonable limit. Make it ten or twenty if that fits your mental model better. You have no way of knowing that those companies would never have existed. They could very well have existed, just no billionaire would have been the majority owner. The money is not removed from their investments, but they are required to divest them to other owners. Funding mechanisms for the companies now self-funded by billionaires would be quite different if the ultra-wealthy were never allowed to exist. It would require more cooperation, but it would not therefore be impossible. If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not. If some people would be less motivated and do less than they do now, it would be a lesser evil that creating oligarchs thirsty to dominate whenever they get the chance. As long as people can live a good and comfortable life, they do not have rights to more than that. People who argue against progressive taxes tend to ignore the fact that modern capitalism is basically a game, one where the rules greatly favor the richest, who have virtually unlimited leverage compared to the average person. They make money exponentially more easily than others. It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes. Every once in a while an adult needs to step in to keep the game fun for everybody, and not just let the best player dominate others and make everybody else miserable. Maybe if we did this, the price gouging and constant turning of the screws would give way to a society where fair trade was the default cultural and economic norm. Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
  • ambicapter 1y ago
    > when in fact it appears they pay double They very obviously don't make only twice as much money as the bottom 80%, so how is that equal in the slightest?
    • roenxi 1y ago
      You've mis-read the comment. This logic is not strictly related but it might help you understand what he was saying: There are ~300 million people in the US who are not billionaires. If they earn, on average, $4 each that balances out a billionaire by income [0]. Since there are <1,000 US billionaires, the average american income would need to drop back to something around the $4,000 range for billionaires to be out-earning them. This is why taxes tend to land heavily on the middle class, the billionaires don't control most of the money. If politicians want access to money, the biggest pot isn't the billionaires. [0] And billionaires don't generally make billions in income because it is a wealth measure.
• refurb 1y ago
  What is the right percentage for the 1% to pay? State a percent. I keep here this “the rich should pay more”, but rarely do I hear a number.
  • specialist 1y ago
    Whatever it takes to restore 1960s level of inequity. By whatever measure works, eg old school gini coefficient or something more modern. You're right though: food fights over decimal points and gaming the rules nicely obfuscates any constructive debate about what kind of society we want.
    • refurb 1y ago
      Your answer begs the question - why is the 1960’s the right target? And if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax and pre-benefit distribution, it’s not going to change with high taxes and high redistribution (and yes you mentioned it may not be the right measure). And if the Gini coefficient is calculated based on income data from the US, do we know if the better Gini from 1960’s wasn’t just due to income not being reported to the IRS?
      • specialist 1y ago
        > why is the 1960’s the right target? Realpolitik. Proper Nordic levels of (lesser) inequity is not likely in the USA. But selling the nostalgia of our '60s era prosperity might fly. > if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax Firstly, then pick a different different metric. Gini coefficient is merely the most familiar. Secondly, you asked about proper income tax rate. In my pithy reply, I implied outcomes are more important than implementation details, but slap fights (like this one) about those details are used to distract. (I think the kids today call that "bike shedding".) Also, I did not explicitly state that measures of wealth distribution is the central issue. I regret the omission. -- While I have your attention: How do you think our tax regime should be structured? Feel free to link to any prior explanations (posts) I may have missed, so you don't have to repeat yourself.
  • intended 1y ago